Edited by NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 



ABELARD 



THE ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF 
UNIVERSITIES 



GABRIEL- COMPA YRE 

Rectok of the Academt op Poitiers, France 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1893 



h 



A r^ 



COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



PREFACE 

The present essay has no pretension — as its size 
sufficiently indicates — to be a complete and thorough 
history of the universities of the Middle Ages. 

To write that history with all its details, several 
volumes would be necessary, volumes rivalling in their 
dimensions the enormous folios in which the ^erudite 
have massed the documents relating to each univer- 
sity — as, for instance, the Chartularium of the Uni- 
versity of Paris, by Pere Denifle. 

I have merely sought, in a sketch which touches 
on all questions pertaining to this vast subject with- 
out exhausting any of them, to give an idea of what 
these great associations of masters and students which 
played such an important part in the past, must have 
been in their beginnings, in their internal organization, 
their programmes of study, their methods of instruc- 
tion, and, finally, in their general spirit and external 
influence. 

In spite of the bad reputation given to the old 
universities by the Humanists of the Eenaissance, it 
is impossible to ignore the services that they ren- 
dered in their time. They constitute an epoch, and a 
characteristic epoch, in the history of education ; and 
I hope that the young and brilliant universities of 



vi PREFACE 

America will not find it uninteresting to glance back- 
ward at the history of their predecessors in ancient 
Europe. 

In any case, I trust that my readers may find as 
much pleasure in running through this little book as I 
have had in writing it. I trust also, that the literary 
dictionaries of the future, if they should grant me a 
place in their pages, will have the goodness when 
they mention my name to follow it with this notice : 
Gabriel Compayre, a French writer, whose least me- 
diocre work, translated into English before being 
printed, was published in America. 

Poitiers, October 17, 1892. 



CONTENTS xiii 

PAGE 

lie affairs — Political philosophy — Clamor for reforms — 
Conception of a paternal government — Intervention in eccle- 
siastical affairs — Other universities — National character 
— German universities — II. Spirit of liberty in the old uni- 
versities—Free language toward the Popes themselves — 
Some examples of independent and bold opinions —Begin- 
nings of a new spirit — More liberal methods of study 
recommended by Robert de Sorbon — Protests against the 
discipline of the rod — Preparations for a new era — Decay 
of the mediseval universities — Conclusion 287 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 307 

INDEX 311 



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Part I 

THE ORIGINS OF THE UNIVERSITIES 



ABELARD 



CHAPTEE I 
ABELARD THE F0RERUNNER OF THE UNIVERSITIES 

I. Testimony to the influence of Abelard — The transmission of 
learning from Charlemagne to Abelard — II. The life of Abelard 

— His character, his eloquence, his method of teaching — His 
audiences the first great assemblages of students — III. Abelard's 
doctrines and point of view — Freedom of inquiry and of reason 

— His method followed in the schools of Paris. 

Abelard was born in 1079 ; lie died in 1142. The 
University of Paris^as not formally constituted until 
sixty years later, in the first years of the thirteenth 
century. And yet Abelard has been, and should be, 
considered as the real founder of this university, 
which served as model and prototype of most of the 
other universities of the Middle Ages. There is here 
an apparent paradox which must first be resolved and 
explained, if the title given to this treatise is to be 
justified. 



Let me begin by establishing the fact that I am in 
accord with all serious authorities in attributing to 
Abelard a pre-eminent part in the foundation of the 

3 



4 ABELARD 

great Parisian University. " The man," Victor Cousin 
has said, "who, by his qualities and his defects, by 
the audacity of his opinions, the eclat of his life, his 
inborn passion for controversy, and his rare talent for 
instruction, contributed most to increase and expand 
the taste for study and that intellectual movement 
from which the University of Paris issued in the 
thirteenth century, was Peter Abelard." ^ In England 
the same opinion is held. "The name of Abelard is 
closely associated with the commencement of the 
University of Paris," says Cardinal Newman in his 
interesting essay on Tlie Strength and Weakyiess of 
Universities.^ 

In order not to multiply testimony, I shall content 
myself with invoking finally, that of Pere Denifle, 
the learned editor of the Chartularium Universitatis 
Parisiensis. "Although Abelard," he says, "taught 
long before the constitution of the University of 
Paris, his method of instruction for the sciences, and 
above all for theology and the liberal arts, neverthe- 
less remained the model which the future university 
was to follow."^ 

It is no longer a question whether to accept as true 
the fabulous origins attributed to the University of 
Paris by its earliest historians, by Du Boulay ^ or by 

1 Ouvrages inedits d' Abelard, publics par V. Cousin, 1836. In- 
troduction, 

2 Cardinal Newman, Historical Sketches, vol. iii, p. 192. Lon- 
don, 1889. 

3 Chartularium Universitatis Parisieiisis. Paris, Delalain, 1889, 
t. i, Introduction, p. xvi. 

4 Bul^eus, Historia Universitatis Parisiensis ah anno circiter 
800. Paris, 1665-1673. 6 vols. 



FORERUNNER OF THE UNIVERSITIES 5 

Crevier, who does not hesitate to say : " The Univer- 
sity of Paris, as a school, goes back to Alcuin; . . . 
Charlemagne was its founder." ^ 

Doubtless, there is no absolute breach of continuity 
either in the history of the progress of human thought, 
or in the evolution of scholastic studies. The three 
centuries which separate Charlemagne from Abelard 
were not a period of complete inertia, of intellectual 
slumber, of absolutely obscure night. And it would 
even be possible to establish, as has been attempted 
by ingenious and learned men, a sort of filiation 
from Alcuin to Abelard, which would demonstrate 
that laborious and instructed men had not ceased to 
pass the torch of studies from hand to hand.^ Bor- 
rowing the biblical style, we might say, Alcuinus 
genuit Kabanum,^ Babanus autem genuit Lupum serva- 
tum;^ . . . and continue thus down to Eoscelinus 
and William of Champeaux, who were Abelard's mas- 
ters. 

It is incontestable, on the other hand, that impor- 
tant schools were flourishing in the ninth, tenth, and 
eleventh centuries ; those of Eheims, Tours, Angers, 
and Laon; that of the Benedictines of Cluny, under 
Odo (879-942) and his disciples; that of the Bene- 
dictines of Bee in Normandy, with Lanfranc (1005- 
1089) and St. Anselm (1033-1109) at its head; and 
an obscure multitude of episcopal or monastic schools, 

1 Crevier, Histoire de VUniversite de Paris, 1761, t. vii, pp. 92- 
162. 

2 Monnier, Alcuin et son influence, p. 189. 

2 Rabanus Maurus (776-856), a pupil of Alcuin, opened a cele- 
brated school at Fulda in Germany. 

4 Loup de Ferrieres (805-882) taught at Fulda. 



6 ABELARD 

established sometimes under the patronage of bishops 
in the chapter-houses of cathedral churches, some- 
times under the protection of monasteries, in which 
elementary instruction was given. These schools had 
succeeded to the Schools of the Palace of Charle- 
magne, "a great but transitory creation." 

But neither in the existence of these schools, nor 
in the hereditary transmission from one individual to 
another of what then constituted the light luggage 
of human science, is it possible to see anything more 
than the remote preparation for the universities of 
the Middle Ages, and not their direct and immediate 
origins. The various schools which maintained them- 
selves after the unfruitful efforts of Charlemagne, 
served no purpose save that of preventing the com- 
plete shipwreck of intellectual culture. They might 
be compared to a Noah's ark, launched upon that sea 
of ignorance and increasing barbarism, to preserve the 
sacred deposit of letters and sciences, until the day 
when the carefully collected germs might again, under 
circumstances more favorable and a more clement sky, 
find a soil to fertilize. The episcopal and monastic 
schools were the cradle of the universities in appear- 
ance only. 

Abelard, it is true — when, about the year 1100, he 
arrived at Paris for the first time, at the age of 
twenty — was a pupil of the episcopal school of the 
cloister of Notre Dame, which was annexed, as was 
customary, to the cathedral church. But, though he 
attended the lectures of William of Champeaux ^ for 

1 William of Champeaux, who died in 1121, was one of the most 
brilliant champions of Realism. See the Abbe Michaud's work: 



FORERUNNER OF THE UNIVERSITIES 7 

a time, it was only to separate from him almost im- 
mediately, to attack his doctrines, to set himself up 
as an independent opponent, and, changing from pupil 
to master, to open in 1102, a school at Melun, and 
then another at Corbeil, until such time as he should 
establish himself, ^^ until he should pitch his camp," 
as he said in his boastful speech on the heights of 
Ste. Genevieve.^ This single episode in Abelard's life 
is, as it were, the symbol, the striking image, of the 
relations subsisting in general between the episcopal 
schools and the universities ; the latter supplanting 
the former and installing themselves in their place, 
or at any rate, relegating them to obscurity or to a 
secondary position while awaiting the time when they 
should absorb them completely. "The monastic and 
episcopal schools," says an English writer,^ "con- 
tinued to exist long after the rise of the universities ; 
but it is obvious that if the former represented merely 
the stationary and conservative element, while the 
latter attracted to themselves whatever lay beneath 
the ban of unreasoning authority — all that widened 
the domain of knowledge or enriched the limits 
already attained — the comparative importance of the 
two agencies could not remain the same." 

Victor Leclerc says .rightly, that the schools of the 
bishops and the cloisters "continued to flourish at 
the same time as the new societies of studies," ^ that 

Guillaume de Champeaux et les ecoles de Paris au XII^ Siecle, 
Paris, 1867. 

1 ". . . in monte S. Genovefse scholarum nostrarum castra posui," 
Ahelardi Opera, edition Cousin, 1849, t. i, p. 6. 

2 Mullinger, T^e University of Cambridge. Cambridge, 1873, p. 70. 
8 LeclerCf Etat des Lettres au XIV^^ Siecle, i, p. 302. 



8 ABELARD 

is to say, the universities. The truth is that, without 
disappearing, they declined. The universities, pro- 
tected alike by popes, kings, and emperors, replaced 
them in the favor of both the civil and the religious 
powers ; and, drawing to themselves the very great 
majority of students, they were destined to represent 
increasingly, in opposition to the immobile tradition 
of the older schools, the forward march, the move- 
ment of ideas, the progress of thought. If one desires 
to know the real heirs of the monastic and episcopal 
schools, it is not in the universities that he must seek 
them, but in the congregations, and the various relig- 
ious orders, with which precisely it was that the 
universities had so many struggles to undergo, and 
whose members they never admitted within their pre- 
cincts save with suspicion and unwillingly. 

II 

To prepare the great movement from which the 
universities were to proceed something different from 
the passive transmission of certain beliefs accepted 
with docility was needful, something other than cer- 
tain schools of theology or timid dialectics piously 
sleeping within the bosom of the Church. To begin 
with, a man, a scholar, must be found sufficiently 
Catholic not to quarrel with the received dogmas, but 
nevertheless bold enough to open new paths for him- 
self, and, at the same time, powerful enough, both in 
speech and in thought, to move minds, arouse the 
taste for study, assemble great audiences, and finally, 
by his success as an instructor, establish a great 



FORERUNNER OF THE UNIVERSITIES 9 

intellectual movement, A short sketch, of the life 
and work of Abelarcl will show how this programme 
was accomplished. 

It is difficult, by a mere perusal of Abelard's works, 
to understand the effect he produced upon his hearers 
by the force of his argumentation, whether studied 
or improvised, and by the ardor and animation of his 
eloquence, and the grace and attractiveness of his 
person. But the testimony of his contemporaries is 
unanimous ; even his adversaries themselves render 
justice to his high oratorical qualities. No one ever 
reasoned with more subtlety, or handled the dialectic 
tool with more address ; and assuredly, something of 
these qualities is to be found in the writings he has 
left us. But the intense life, the enthusiastic ardor 
which enlivened his discourses, the beauty of his 
face, and the charm of his voice cannot be imparted 
by cold manuscripts; Heloise, whose name is insepa- 
rably linked with that of her unfortunate husband, 
and whom Charles de Eemusat does not hesitate to 
call ^'the first of women"; ^ who, in any case, was a 
superior person of her time ; Heloise, who loved Abe- 
lard with " an immoderate love," ^ and who, under 
the veil of a religieuse and throughout the practice 
of devotional duties, remained faithful to him until 
death; Heloise said to him in her famous letter of 
1136 : "Thou hast^ two things especially which could 
instantly win thee the hearts of all women : the charm 

1 Charles de Remusat, Abelard. Paris, 1845. t. i, p. 262 

2 ". . . te immoderato amore complexa sum," Abelardi Opera, 
edition Cousin, t. i, p. 74. 

3 " . . . dictandi videlicet et cantandi gratia," Ibid., p. 76. 



10 ABELAUD 

thou knowest how to impart to thy voice in speaking, 
and in singing." 

External gifts combined with intellectual qualities 
to make of Abelard an incomparable seducer of minds 
and hearts. Add to this an astonishing memory, a 
knowledge as profound as was compatible with the re- 
sources of his time, and a vast erudition which caused 
his contemporaries to consider him a master of uni- 
versal knowledge.' It was not merely the weapons of 
a skilful but barren logic that he had recourse to when 
he desired to convince; nourished on the perusal of 
Latin orators and jjoets, he embellished his discourses 
with literary digressions, classical allusions, and quo- 
tations from Horace or from Vergil. A poet himself 
when at forty years of age he fell in love with 
Heloise, renewing his youth through love and repeat- 
ing the drama of Faust, he composed love-songs in 
the common tongue, which became very popular. 

We must not omit to signalize the intrepidity of his 
ardent character, always ready to attack or to defend, 
provoking controversy rather than seeking to aj^pease 
it; in a word, the adventurous and militant temper 
wherein one recognizes the innovator. Charles de 
R^musat represents Abelard before he was twenty, 
as *' wandering over the provinces, seeking masters 
and adversaries, going from controversy to contro- 
versy, a veritaVjle knight-arrant of philosophy."^ 

1 Abelard avow<i<l, however, tliat he did not know Greek and 
that he ha/J faile^l in the study of mathematics, 

2 Abelard, in his first letter to Heloise, which is like the hist^jry 
of his life, hintoria calarnitatum, himself writes: " JJiver nag di&' 
jmtand/j pcrarahahxnH provin/'idH, peripixtMicorum lemulator fao 
tuH «Mm," AheUrrdi Opf^ro., p. 4. 



I'ORERUNNER OF THE UNIVERSITIES 11 

Later on, when in 1101 he dared to contradict and 
succeeded in refuting William of Champeaux, then at 
the height of his power and reigning as a sovereign 
in the school of the cloister of Notre Dame; and 
when, in 1114, he went to attack on his own ground, 
in his school at Laon, in the midst of his pupils, 
stupefied at such audacity, the old Anselm of Laon, 
himself a pupil of St. Anselm, and who at this epoch 
held "the sceptre of theolog}^," was he not armed 
with extraordinary courage, this young philosopher 
who, without other title than his genius, endowed 
by no one with the right to teach, avowing himself 
without a master, — sine magistro, as his enemies 
reproached him with being, — found in himself the 
needful inspiration to undertake the most formidable 
controversies and to triumph in them ? 

Victory then accompanied and encouraged his ef- 
forts. But, when the hours of his disgrace arrived, 
w^hen the hostility of churchmen whom he had af- 
frighted and troubled in their repose, arraigned him 
successively before two Councils, that of Soissons in 
1121, and that of Sens in 1140, to listen to the con- 
demnation of his heresies ; did he not give proof even 
in his defeat, of an energ}", a force of soul, rare at all 
times, but almost unknown in epochs of blind submis- 
sion and theocratic terror ? 

At Soissons he was not disconcerted, even in the 
midst of a fanatical populace who accused him of hav- 
ing preached that there were three Gods, on account 
of the interpretation he gave to the dogma of the 
Trinity, and who were on the point of stoning some of 
his disciples ; and he embarrassed his accusers by the 



12 ABELARD 

boldness of his replies and his haughty countenance. 
Condemned notwithstanding, obliged to burn his books 
with his own hands, confined as a prisoner in the con- 
vent of St. Medard, it was only in appearance that he 
bowed before the indisputable authority of a sovereign 
tribunal ; in reality, trembling with rage under the 
yoke imposed upon him, ''bound," according to the 
expression of an author of the day, " like a wild rhi- 
noceros," he persevered in his independent thought 
and his personal faith ; just as, though shut up in the 
cloister of Argenteuil, Heloise persevered in her love. 

At Sens, grown old and tired, at odds with St. 
Bernard who occupied a commanding position in the 
Church, — with that man, superior likewise, but su- 
perior solely by the sanctity of his life and the 
ardor of his devotion, and who was, in a word, only 
" a monk," — Abelard, it is true, appeared to fail. 
Instead of defending himself, he retired, restricting 
himself to declaring that he recognized no judge but 
the Roman Pontiff. His persecutors published that 
he had been intimidated, seized with a miraculous con- 
fusion. Is it not more likely that, feeling himself 
condemned in advance before an assembly of openly 
hostile prelates, and unwilling to confess himself de- 
feated, the rationalistic Christian, were it merely to 
retard his discomfiture, appeals to the Pope, as the 
rationalistic philosophers appeal later on to eternal 
truth and justice ? 

The sketch I am making would be incomplete if 
it failed to note a final trait of Abelard's character : 
his confidence in himself, his presumptuous assurance. 
Abelard is not a studious man, devotinsr himself to 



FOKERUNNER OF THE UNIVERSITIES 13 

the search after truth in the silence and solitude of his 
chamber ; he is a combatant, eager for glory and for 
power. After the scandal of his amours with Heloise, 
after the atrocious mutilation to which he had been 
subjected, another man, less strongly tempered, would 
have thought of nothing but hiding his shame in 
retreat. But Abelard, in his ambitious activity, could 
not resign himself to repose, and a year after his cruel 
adventure, in 1120, he opened a new school in Cham- 
pagne and there won again his past victories. " There 
was in this man," says Charles de Eemusat, " some- 
what of the insolence of those natures born for com- 
mand and royalty.'^ Greatly attached to his opinions, 
greatly in love with his own discernment, intoxicated 
moreover, as it were, with the enthusiastic homage of 
his pupils, he had none of the humility, nor even of 
the modesty which the habit of intellectual docility 
rendered easy to his contemporaries. He went so 
far as to write that he considered himself the only 
philosopher of his time ; ^ but for that matter, if he was 
wrong to say it, perhaps he was right in thinking it. 

How can one be astonished that with such qualities 
Abelard gained an extraordinary ascendency over his 
age ; that, having become the intellectual ruler and, 
as it were, the dictator of the thought of the twelfth 
century, he should have succeeded in attracting to 
his chair and in retaining around it thousands of 
young men; the first germ of those assemblages of 
students who were to constitute the universities sev- 
eral years later ? 

1 " . . . quumjam me solum in mundo superesse philosophum 
aBStimarem," Ahelardi Opera, t. i, p. 9. 



14 ABSLABD 

Abelard, in spite of the vicissitudes of his existence, 
waSj above all things, a professor.^ Let me recall in 
a few words, the principal stages in his career. I 
have already stated that by 1102 he had taught at 
Melun, then at Corbeil, from whence, nearer to Paris, 
''he delivered the assault, so to say, on the citadel 
of the school of Notre Dame." This assault became 
still more vigorous when, in 1108, he established 
himself in Paris on the Mount of Ste. Genevieve, 
" that hill destined to become the Sinai of university 
instruction," where schools were already in existence 
which competed freely with the official school of the 
city. It was at this period that William of Cham- 
peaux, discouraged by the growing success of his 
pupil, definitely quitted the cloister of Notre Dame, 
at first to found, at the gates of Paris, a congregation 
which became the celebrated Abbey of St. Victor, but 
afterwards to become the Bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne. 
He left the place free to his rival, and it is about 
1113 that we find Abelard at last installed in the 
school of the city, reigning as master of instruction in 
a town which was already the intellectual capital of 
Europe, and realizing thus the dream of his youth : 
ad scholarum regimen adolescentulus aspirabam.^ 

This was the most brilliant period of his life: it 
lasted but a few years, being interrupted after 1118 

1 It is not known at what date Abelard became a priest. He was 
probably not one at the time of his marriage with Heloise ; this is 
not proved, however. He has himself expressed the opinion that a 
priest may marry. Ahelardi Opera, t. i, p. 16. 

2 "He obtained the chair of the cloister, to which he had long 
aspired, and he taught there at the same time theology and phi- 
losophy. Crevier, op. cit., t. i, p. 127." 



FORERUNNER OF THE UNIVERSITIES 15 

by the scandal of his liaison with Heloise. But from 
1120, after some months of meditation spent at the 
Abbey of St. Denis, he felt again the need for action ; 
he installed himself in the Priory of Maisoncelle, in 
Champagne, where, it is said, he was surrounded by 
three thousand students. Then, after new disturb- 
ances, after the condemnation pronounced by the 
Council of Soissons, after a veritable Ulysses's jour- 
ney from convent to convent, he obtained from the 
King, Louis the Pat, and from his ministers, Stephen 
de Garlande and Suger, permission to establish him- 
self in a retreat of his own choice. Eoyalty in the 
twelfth century, resuming the role and experiencing 
anew the inspirations of Charlemagne, seems from 
this period to have been conscious of its duties 
towards learning and scientiiic men; and the pro- 
tection granted by the ministers of Louis the Fat 
to Abelard, persecuted by the Church, is the prelude 
to the privileges granted to the universities by the 
princes of the thirteenth century. 

Thanks to the royal favor, Abelard was able to fix 
his residence without hindrance in a desert place 
belonging to the territory of Troyes, and there, in 
some fields which were given him, he built an oratory 
of stubble which he called the Paraclete, the Com- 
forter. He had come there alone, save for one pupil. 
But his retreat was soon known ; students flocked to 
him anew, pursuing their regretted master even to 
the wilderness where he had hidden himself. " Cities 
and castles were deserted for this Thebaid of science. 
Tents were set up ; mud walls, covered with moss, rose 
to shelter the numerous disciples who slept on the 



16 ABELAKD 

grass and nourished themselves with rustic dishes 
and coarse bread." ^ The instruction given at this 
School of the Paraclete, marvellously opened in the 
midst of fields, was continued from 1122 to 1125. 
But this new success called forth new attacks which 
saddened all the latter part of Abelard's life. He was 
to reappear only once more, in 1136, in his chair at 
Paris, the first theatre of his glory, ardent as ever, 
in spite of his fifty-seven years, and followed still by 
the sympathy of his hearers. It was at this epoch 
that he had John of Salisbury ^ as a pupil, whose tes- 
timony is precious to recall. " I repaired," he says, 
" to the country of the Palatin ^ peripatetic, who was 
then presiding on Mount Ste. Genevieve, an illustrious 
doctor, admirable for everything. . . . There, at his 
feet, I received the first elements of the dialectic art, 
and, according to the measure of my feeble under- 
standing, I gathered up, with all the avidity of my 
soul, everything that proceeded from his mouth." 

Up to the last day of his teaching, then, Abelard 
was the uncontested master, the professor par excel- 
lence. In a time when there was neither publicity 
nor advertising, and renown could only be established 
slowly and from place to place by conversation and 

1 Charles de Remusat, op. cit., p. 108. 

2 John of Salisbury (1110-1174), an English monk, became secre- 
tary to St. Thomas Becket, afterwards to Alexander III, and finally 
Bishop of Chartres. He wrote numerous works, among others the 
Metalogicus, which is a plea for literary studies. 

3 Abelard was born near Nantes, in the town of Pallet or Palais, 
whence the name of Palatin given him by John of Salisbury. It is 
known that "Abelard" is only a surname, the origin of which is 
much disputed. See Remusat, op. cit., p. 171. 



FORERUNNER OF THE UNIVERSITIES 19 

oral accounts, he nevertheless acquired both glora- 
and popularity. Wherever he went, says Cousin,^ 
he seemed to carry reputation and a crowd along 
with him. He attracted such a vast number of hear- 
ers, not only from all parts of France, but even of 
Europe, that, as he says himself, the inns were not 
sufficient to contain them, nor the earth to feed them. 
" No idea can be given of the effect he produced in 
teaching philosophy, and never does any science seem 
to have had a more powerful propagandist. As the 
head of a school he recalls, if he does not efface, for 
brilliancy and ascendency the success of the great 
philosophers of Greece."^ But however flattering 
this comparison may be — for nobody dreams of mak- 
ing Abelard equal with Socrates or Plato — it still 
does injustice, nevertheless, to what was particularly 
characteristic in the great assemblages of men who 
thronged about the professor of the Middle Ages. 
The great philosophers of antiquity had only a very 
small number of pupils. Around Abelard there was 
a multitude of human beings ; there were more than 
five thousand pupils in his school at Paris. His 
school was open to every comer and entered by who- 
ever willed, as is shown by the anecdote of a young 
student, the pupil of William of Champeaux, of 
whom the Church has made a saint, St. Gosvin, who, 
in 1108, desiring to try conclusions with Abelard, 
bravely entered the school on Mount Ste. Genevieve 
while the master was sx3eaking, and making a sign 
that he wished to say something, drew upon himself 
this apostrophe : " Mind you keep still and don't 
interrupt my lecture.'' 

1 Charles de Remusat, op. cit., p. 31. 



^^ ABELARl' 



graF 

ni 



It is not alone by the outward success of his scho- 
lastic apostolate that Abelard merits consideration as 
the precursor of the modern spirit and the promoter 
of the foundation of the universities ; it is also by 
his doctrine, or at least by his method. He may, in 
fact, be counted among the liberators of the human 
mind, and even, according to the expression of 
Brucker, '^ among the martyrs of philosophy." ^ 

In what, then, consisted the novelty of his opin- 
ions ? Abelard remains especially celebrated, among 
the historians of philosophy, for having taken an in- 
termediate and sound position between the Realists 
and the Nominalists, between William of Charapeaux 
and Roscelinus ; ^ for having maintained that general 
ideas are neither independent entities nor mere words, 
but must be defined as concepts of the mind seizing 
the real relations of things. But whatever may be 
the value of this theory of Abelard, of this Concep- 
tualism which was the doctrine of good sense, it is 
not in it that his real originality appears ; that con- 
sists, above all, in the application he made of reason 
to theology, in his Christian rationalism, which pre- 
pared the way for philosophical rationalism. "What 
Abelard taught that was most novel for his age," says 

1 Brucker, Historia critica philosophise, t. iii, p. 704. Cousin 
does not hesitate to say that Abelard was " leader of a school and 
almost martyr of an opinion." 

2 Roscelinus, a philosopher of the eleventh century, the chief of 
the Nominalists, horn in Brittany, like Ahelard, who had, it appears, 
followed his lectures: '' Magistri nostri Roscelini tarn insana 
sententia." {Oavrcujes inedlts, p. 471.) 



FORERUNNER OF THE UNIVERSITIES 19 

Mme. Guizot, " was liberty, the right to consult rea- 
son and to listen to it alone. An almost involuntary 
innovator, he had methods that were still bolder than 
his doctrines, and principles whose range far outran 
the consequences at which he himself arrived. Hence, 
his influence is not to be sought for in the verities 
which he established, but in the impulse which he 
gave. He attached his name to none of those power- 
ful ideas which act throughout the centuries, but he 
imparted to minds that impetus which perpetuates 
itself from generation to generation." ^ 

Assuredly, no one claims that Abelard was the first 
who, in the Middle Ages, had introduced dialectics 
into theology, reason into authority. In the ninth 
century, Scotus Erigena had already said : " Authority 
is derived from reason." Scholasticism, which is noth- 
ing but logic enlightening theology, an effort of rea- 
son to demonstrate dogma, had begun before Abelard ; 
but it was he who gave movement and life to the 
method by lending it his power and his renown. It 
was he above all who erected it into a principle and 
gave it a general application. 

To estimate the independence of Abelard's thought, 
to comprehend how far he was in advance of his time, 
it is sufficient to recall the opposition he encountered 
among the representatives of tradition. " The human 
mind," said St. Bernard in his earliest denunciations 
of Abelard, "the human mind usurps all, no longei^ 
leaving anything to faith. ... It lays hands upon,' 
what is most high ; it searches that which is stronger 

1 Mme. Guizot, Essai sur la Vie et Us Merits d' Abelard et de 
Heloise, p. 343. 



20 ABELARD 

than itself. It flings itself upon divine things ; it 
forces rather than opens the holy places. Eead, if 
you please, Peter Abelard's book which he calls 
theology. ^^ ^ 

It is important to observe that Abelard did not 
enter upon the study of theology until after he had 
devoted himself to the study of philosophy. When 
he presented himself at the school of Anselm at 
Laon, his fellows reproached with having as yet been 
initiated only into "the natural sciences.'^ Thus, 
even in teaching theology, he remains the man who 
desires to comprehend before he believes. He does 
not proceed by authority. He appeals to the freedom 
of the mind. He imagines, no doubt, with a naive 
confidence, that this effort to examine will leave the 
traditional beliefs intact ; but he none the less opens 
the door to all succeeding liberties, to all the heresies 
of the future ; since he wills that everything shall be 
discussed, everything explained, that there shall be 
no more secrets, no more mysteries. 

Abelard has doubted ; he has investigated. One of 
his books entitled the Sic et Noii{' furnishes the proof 
of this. He there accumulates the arguments for 
and against every question, " I expose these contra- 
dictions," he says himself, " so that they may excite 
the susceptible minds of my readers to the search for 
truth, and that they may render their minds more 
penetrating as the effect of that search."^ The reader 

1 This is the Introductio ad theologiam, composed about 1121. 
See Abelardi Opera, edition Covisin, 1849, t, ii. 

2 The Sic et Non has been published by V. Cousiu in the Ouvrages 
inedits d' Abelard. 

3 " . . . Ut teneros lectores ad maximum inquirendx veritatis 



FORERUNNER OF THE UNIVERSITII^S 21 

was to find the solution of these controversies for him- 
self. Thus Abelard gave to the Christian mysteries, 
as has been very justly remarked, "the form of a 
problem, and to the dogmas the form of a solution." 

It was all very well for him to incline for his own 
part toward that solution of every question which 
was most conformable to authority. It is none the 
less true that the provisional orthodoxy of his con- 
clusions, if it dissimulated, did not wholly conceal the 
freedom of his method ; that it excited the curiosity 
of other minds ; that it proclaimed the sovereignty of 
dialectics ; that, consequently, it emancipated reason 
by giving it confidence in its own forces ; that it au- 
thorized, in fine, by its processes of argumentation, 
the free solutions which it did not teach and which it 
dared not even glance at. 

It is the method of Abelard which is the soul of 
the scholastic philosophy, of that philosophy which 
lasted for five centuries, until the Renaissance, and 
which reigned supreme in the University of Paris, 
which in early times was merely a great school of 
theology and philosophy. " That Abelard's method," 
says Pere Denifle, "was introduced into the schools 
and never departed thence, can be doubted by none 
who will compare the works which preceded Abelard 
with those that succeeded him, notably the Quces- 
tiones, the Dispuiationes, the Summoe, composed by 
the professors of those times. . . . We encounter 
this method again in the celebrated book which, dur- 
ing several centuries has been, as it were, the text of 

exercitium provocarent et acutiores ex inquisitione redderent." 
(Sic et non, prologus.) 



22 ABELARD 

theological instruction, I mean the Sentences by Peter 
Lombard.' . . . The influence of the same method is 
felt even in the famous work which has been like 
the code of the schools of canon law, the Decretals 
of Gratiany^ 

It is, therefore, permissible to conclude that we are 
not deceived in attributing to Abelard the first place 
in a study of the origin of the universities and the 
causes which gave them birth. Abelard was the 
real founder of the University of Paris, and by that 
fact the promoter of all the universities created in 
its image. He was its founder in several ways : at 
first through his reputation, by habituating foreigners 
to come to Paris for the purpose of studying there, 
and by assembling vast audiences around him ; after- 
wards by popularizing the studies and the methods 
which were held in honor for centuries in the Parisian 
schools. He raised the level of instruction by sub- 
stituting, in the place of the old routine of the trivium 
and the quadrivium, and of purely elementary studies, 
the lofty lessons of reasoned theology and abstract 
philosox^hy. He was the first professor of superior in- 
struction ; and he did his work with an incomparable 
eclat. Among his immediate pupils, says Crevier, 
were twenty cardinals, fifty archbishops or bishops, 
and a Pope, Celestin II ; and he thus began to make 
the theological school of Paris the Seminary of Chris- 
tian Europe. But he also counted among his disci- 
ples bold and independent spirits : such as Arnold of 
Brescia, who was an innovator both in politics and 
religion, who revolutionized Pome, and who expiated 
1 See Part II, chap. ii. 2 gee Part II, chap. iii. 



FORERUNNER OF THE UNIVERSITIES 23 

on the scaffold, in 1155, his audacity of thought 
and deed. In fine, beyond the actual limits of the 
audiences that followed Abelard's lectures with en- 
thusiasm, it is permissible to say that, in the fol- 
lowing centuries, he has had as disciples all those 
who, in any degree whatever, have maintained the 
rights of reason and contended for the emancipation 
of the human mind. One cannot awaken thought 
without unchaining it ; and without wishing to force 
things, Abelard, the first of French philosophers in 
the order of time, is, by the intellectual movement 
which he determined, the precursor of Eamus and 
of Descartes, in other words, of the Eenaissance and 
the modern spirit. 



CHAPTER II 

THE GENERAL CAUSES OF THE RISE OF UNIVERSITIES 

T. Individual and general causes — Spontaneity of the growth of the 
first universities — Popes and kings protectors, not founders — 
Exceptions : University of Palancia (1212) , of Naples (1224) — 
Generally a long local evolution precedes the university constitu- 
tion — Specialization of studies in the beginning — Progressive ex- 
tension — Mutual exchanges — II. Original meaning of the terms 
universitas, studium generale — A university is originally an 
association of students and teachers — General association move- 
ment — The Commons — The Crusades — The trade-guilds — III. 
Equal patronage of the ecclesiastical and civil powers — Univer- 
sities considered as an instrument for the propagation of the faith 
— Various citations from pontifical bulls — Universities specially 
constituted against heresy — IV. Reasons for the royal or imperial 
favor — Interested motives — Preparation of legists and coun- 
sellors for the kings — Universities not only centres of studies, 
but also of political action. 

However important the role of Abelard may have 
been, I have no thought of attributing to a single 
man, or an individual influence, an academic revolu- 
tion so considerable as that of the foundation of the 
universities of the Middle Ages. The most brilliant 
personality can do nothing if the society in which it 
finds itself is not propitious, if circumstances do not 
second its action. ;=- 

Abelard, moreover, is not the only individual whose 
name should be inscribed on the first page of the 
Golden Book of the founders of the universities ; thus 
24 



CAUSES OF THE RISE OF UNIVERSITIES 25 

he counts for nothing^ in the constitution of the great 
Italian school, the University of Bologna, the first in 
date of all the universities, since its existence was 
officially recognized in 1158. The Bolognese legist 
Irnerius (1067-1138 or 1150) merits, for his personal 
action, a place, if not equal, at least analogous to that 
assigned to Abelard.^ 

After bringing into prominence the part played by 
the French philosopher, and saluting him as the chief 
individual cause of the birth of the universities, it is 
important to mention the general causes whose concur- 
rence explains the origin and the development of those 
great and powerful scientific associations. 



It is necessary, in the first place, to discard the 
prejudice that the first universities of the Middle 
Ages were born suddenly, in a day, at a precise mo- 
ment whose date it would be possible to fix exactly. 
Doubtless the letters-patent of kings, the bulls of 
popes, which have for the most part been their con- 
stitutive charters, have each their date. But these acts 
of formal consecration, coming from the royal or the 
pontifical authority, contemplated almost always an 
accomplished fact ; they simply sanctioned an institu- 
tion which had formed itself, and whose slow elabora- 
tion had been prepared by the spontaneous efforts of 
several generations. This is so true that, even for 

1 It is established, nevertheless, that even at Bologna the works 
of Abelard were read, studied, and imitated in the time of Gratian. 

2 See Part III, chap. iii. 



26 ABELARD 

the universities whose histories are best known, — for 
the University of Paris, for example, — it is impos- 
sible to say exactly at what epoch they commenced.^ 
The privilege conferred by Philip Augustus in 1200 on 
Parisian students and instructors ; the regulation of 
the Cardinal Legate, Kobert de Courqon, in 1215 ; the 
pontifical charter of Gregory IX, in 1231, — all these 
documents presuppose the previous existence, the 
already constituted force, of the Parisian schools of 
which they undertake to regulate the organization in 
detail. 

In a word, the popes, like the kings, if they were 
the patrons, the protectors of the first universities, 
were not their founders. The universities sprang from 
a spontaneous movement of the human mind.^ By 
the very force of things, with the aid of time, and 
thanks to favorable social conditions, they were the 
natural result of one of those intellectual movements 
which, like the Kenaissance of the sixteenth century 
or the Eevolution of 1789, after ages of torpor, gain 
force enough to dominate the human mind. They 
originated from one of those fortunate crises of 
growth which are met with, from time to time, in 
the life of humanity, as in that of individuals, during 
their adolescence. "The University of Paris," says 

1 "What we know the least about in all our history," said Pro- 
fessor M. Croiset of the University of Montpellier, at the centenary 
fetes of 1889, " is the precise moment when it began. Universities 
do not come into the world with a clatter." 
j 2 Compare Savigny, Geschichte des romischen Rechts, chap, xxx, 
sect. 60 : "It would be altogether erroneous to compare the earliest 
universities of the Middle Ages with the learned foundations of our 
own times, established by a monarch," etc. 



V 



n 



CAUSES OF THE RISE OF UNIVERSITIES 27 

Thiirot, "was born of the need of conv^^nionsliip 
which men who cultivate their intelligerce feel."^ 
With still more precision Mr. Laurie has written: 
'^ The universities were founded by a concurrence ' 
(not wholly fortuitous) of able men who had some-j 
thing they wished to teach and youths who desired 
to learn." 2 ^ 

Doubtless,' when once the first universities had 
found their definitive form, it was easy for popes 
and kings to decree, at a given date, the creation of 
a new establishment. The model once fashioned, it 
became easy to imitate it. Thus it is that numbers 
of universities, founded in the fourteenth and fif- 
teenth centuries, are merely faithful copies of the 
University of Paris or that of Bologna. But at the 
beginning, in the thirteenth century, we see hardly 
more than two universities which form an exception 
to the general rule of a more or less long preparation, 
and which sprang instantaneously from an act of 
sovereign will : that of Palencia, in Spain, created 
by Alfonso VIII of Castile in 1212-1214; and that 
of Naples, constituted in 1224 by Frederic II. It is 
to be remarked, besides, that these universities, by the 
very reason of their factitious origin, were scarcely 
prosperous. That of Palencia, notably, had only a 
precarious and ephemeral existence.^ And it is per- 
missible to conclude that the majority of the univer- 

1 Thurot, De V organisation de I'enseignement dans V Universite 
de Paris. Paris, 1850, p. 3. 

2 Laurie, Lectures on the Rise and Early Constitution of Uni- 
versities. Loudon, 1886, p. 108. 

3 Vicente de la Fuente, Historia de las TJniversidades en Espana. 
Madrid, 1884, t. i, p. 76. 



28 ABELARD 

sities, even the smallest provincial ones, such as those 
of Orlean.s aR'^». Angers in France, have been the pro- 
duct of a long local evolution, and thrust their roots 
deep into a long j^ast of labor and intellectual culture. 

It is only in modern times that flourishing universi- 
ties may be seen springing out of the earth between 
one day and the next, created, so to say, by the stroke 
of a magic wand. To make such improvisations pos- 
sible, two things are needful which were alike un- 
known to the Middle Ages : either a governmental 
centralization sufficiently strong to be able to install 
at once, in any given city, a corps of professors, with 
the necessary appliances ; or such individual munifi- 
cence as has been witnessed in the United States 
many times during this century in the case of such 
men as George Peabody, Ezra Cornell, and Johns 
Hopkins, — to cite only these, — munificence great 
enough to establish complete universities in a few 
years, equipped with all their instruments. 

Things went otherwise in the Middle Ages. As 
has been very justly remarked by an annalist of the 
universities of Sicily : '^ A doctor of some reputation 
drew around him a group of disciples eager to be in- 
structed. Their numbers gradually increased ; other 
doctors, finding an audience all ready, set up their 
chairs near his ; and thus was founded a school which 
went by the name of Studium, but which did not 
at first embrace the entire body of human learn- 
ing. The University of Paris began with schools of 
theology and philosophy. The school of Salerno, the 
most ancient in all Italy, was never anything but 
a medical school. The University of Bologna, which 



CAUSES OF THE RISE OF UNIVERSITIES 29 

was so greatly renowned, which had eighty professor- 
ships, and whither flocked as many as twelve thou- 
sand students from all countries, was at tirst only 
a school of Eoman law. So, too, the University of 
Padua comprised at the beginning only its chairs of 
law." 1 

It is impossible, in fact, to avoid the conclusion 
that the universities, when they began, did not^in the 
least resemble complete bodies of instruction.x They 
began by specialization.) "Four cities," wrote St. 
Thomas Aquinas toward the middle of the thirteenth 
century, " surpass all others, Parisms in scientiis, Sa- 
lernum in medicinis, Bononia in legibus, Aurelianis 
(Orleans) in actoribus " (pleaders) . It was in nowise 
necessary that a school, a studium generate, desiring 
to call itself a university, should be provided with 
the four faculties : arts, theology, law, and medicine. 
The University of Paris was itself incomplete, since 
civil law was not taught there. It was only 1360 
that Pope Innocent VI created a school of theology 
at Bologna. Orleans was never more than a univer- 
sity of law, to use the expression then in vogue.^ 
The University of Avignon was opened in 1227 by the 
establishment of a theological instruction destined to 
combat heresy.^ On the other hand, a great number 
of universities either never had professors of the- 
ology, or did not have them at first. ^^ Neither at 

1 Aube, Etude sur Vinstruction publique en Sicile. Paris, 1872, 
p. 4. 

2 Etienne Pasquier, Recherches cle la France, t. i, p. 989. 

3 Marcel Fournier, Les statuts et privileges des Universites fran- 
^aises. Paris, 1891, t. ii, p. 301. 



30 ABELARD 

Salamanca nor Coimbra, neither at Valladolid nor at 
Lerida, up to the fifteenth century," says a historian 
of the Spanish universities, " was there any theologi- 
cal instruction except a few chairs of canon law. It 
is a mistake to imagine that the point of departure for 
the universities was the idea of studying ecclesiasti- 
cal science." ^ 

At Paris dialectics and theology were emphasized, 
by reason of the movement started by Abelard ; the 
study of civil law took the lead in the majority of 
the Italian universities, through a natural affinity 
with Kome, and thanks to the most carefully pre- 
served traditions of Eoman law ; elsewhere, as in 
the universities of Spain, for example, under the 
more direct influence exerted in that country by 
Arabian physicians, the medical sciences came first ; 
everywhere, in fine, for local reasons and particular 
circumstances, a special instruction is first developed. 
It stimulates intellectual effort in a limited field; 
then, little by little, the circle is enlarged ; the 
awakened human mind stretches itself in all direc- 
tions ; studies of another order are grafted on the 
primitive stem, and new schools are seen to open 
beside the first. 

At the same time exchanges are made, and, as it 
were, colonizations from city to city. Legists from 
Bologna introduced the study of law into the French 
universities, as, for example, at Montpellier. Parisian 
theologians carried their science and their methods 
to Oxford. And, thanks to these reciprocal relations, 
the universities, insensibly aggregating the different 
1 Vicente de la Fuente, op. cit., t. i, p. 227. 



CAUSES OF THE RISE OF UNIVERSITIES 31 

kinds of studies then known, were for the most part 
able to constitute themselves with their new quad- 
rivium : theology, law, medicine, and arts. 



II 

One mistake must be avoided. "University," at 
the outset, is not a synonym of the university of . 
science7~but^~sTmpIy p.£ tfo university of. persons, / 
teachers, and student Sj doctor es et docendi, who com- 
pose aTgroup, an association of studies. The proof 
of this is that, in all the acts relating to the Univer- 
sity of Paris in the thirteenth century, the word 
universitas is always followed by the genitives magis- 
trorum et scholarium. In the letter by which Pope 
Innocent III in 1205, invited the professors of Paris 
to send some of their number to Constantinople to 
reform the studies there, these are the opening words : 
" Universis magistris et scJiolaribus Parisiensibus, to all 
the masters and scholars of Paris." And a few lines 
further on, the pope addresses the university in these 
terms : Universitatem vestram rogamus} In the stat- 
utes given to the Medical Paculty of Montpellier, in 
1220, by Cardinal Conrad, Legate of the Holy See, 
the author asks the opinion of the " University of the 
physicians of Montpellier, tarn doctorum quam disci- 
pulorum.^' 2 But what use is it to multiply testimony ? 
It is unnecessary to recall that Orleans was never 
anything but a " University of law" ; that at Bologna, 
in one and the same city, two universities were recog- 

1 Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis. Paris, 1889, t. i, pp. 
62, 63. 2 jvi, Fournier, op. cit., t. ii, p. 4, 



82 ABELARD 

nized, that of law and that of arts. The question 
is not a doubtful one. Universities, in its primitive 
sense, merely signifies "association/' "corporation." 
" In the language of the civil law," observes Maiden, 
"all corporations were called universitates, as forming 
one whole out of many individuals. In the German 
jurisconsults universitas is the word for a corporate 
town. In Italy, it was applied to the incorporated 
trades in the cities. In ecclesiastical language the 
term was sometimes applied to a number of churches 
united under the sujoerintendence of one archdeacon. 
In a papal rescript of the year 688 it is used of the 
body of the canons of the church of Pisa." ^ 

No use can be made, as against the definition I 
have given of the word " university," of the ambiguity 
which might be created by the expression " studium 
generale/^ constantly used, from the second half of the 
thirteenth century, to designate a centre of studies.^ 
Nor does studium generale mean a school embracing 
the complete circle of sciences. Bologna, when it 
was still merely a school of law, Orleans, which 
has never been anything else, were studia generalia 
as truly as the most complete universities. The 
epithet generale was not applied in view of the extent 
or nature of the instruction, but simply of the fact 
that the lectures were public, open to everybody, ac- 
cessible to students of all countries and all conditions. 
"The universities," says Laurie, "were ojyen to all 

1 Professor Maiden, Origin of Universities, p. 13. 

2 Studiuni (jenerale should be understood as cowjregatio gene- 
ralis, the general assembly of all the members of the university, 
Savigny is wrong in suggesting that the adjective generale relates 
to the privilege docendi hie et uhique. 



CAUSES OF THE EISE OF UNIVERSITIES 33 

without restriction as studia puhlica or generalia, as 
opposed to tlie more restricted ecclesiastical schools 
which were under a Eule" ^ 

( The universities then, at their origin, were merely- 
academic associations, analogous, as societies of mutual ^ 
guaranty, to the corporations of workingmen, the com- 
mercial leagues, the trade-^v'lds which were playing 
so great a part at the so^^^.e epoch; analogous also, 
by the privileges granted tb them, to the municipal 
associations and political communities which date 
from the same time. It was from the second half 
of the eleventh century that the Lombard and Tus- 
can cities rose against their sovereign bishops and 
formed themselves into a veritable republic, leagued 
among themselves, but independent and self-governing. 
If Italy, among all European countries, has been the 
one that saw the birth of the most universities in the 
thirteenth century, she^certainly owes this to special 
social conditions, to the republican constitution of the 
majority of her cities.^ In the same way, it is during 
the twelfth century that the spirit of political liberty 
began to develop itself in France and the emancipa- 
tion of the communes was accomplished. 

On the other hand, the Crusades, while binding 
closer the ties and solidifying the relations between 
the peoples of Western Europe, excited the imagina- 
tion, brought the Occident into contact with the 
Orient, with the civilization and science of the Arabs. 

1 Laurie, op. cit., p. 101. 

2 Of the fifteen cities of Northern Italy which in 1226 founded 
the Second Lombard League, five had universities from tlie thir- 
teenth century : Bologna, Vicenza, Padua, Vercelli, Plaisance. 



34 ABELARD 

They inspired an inclination for adventure and travel, 
and, in fine, uniting men of all ranks and countries 
by the impulse of a common enthusiasm, they opened 
the way to associatioub of another sort, founded, not 
for the deliverance of the Holy Land, but for the 
conquest of knowledge. 

It is beyond doubt t}iP^- '^he university associations 
modelled themselves upory A much older associations 
which sprang from the .e/ ^ity of protecting com- 
mercial and industrial in uerests; either those which, 
in the interior of a city, grouped workmen of the same 
trade ; ^ or those which, like the Hanse of Hamburg 
and of Lubeck (1241), united a certain number of 
industrial towns for the development of foreign com- 
merce ; or, finally, those travelling corporations which, 
square and trowel in hand, went from province to 
province, from city to city, to build their cathedrals.^ 

Established for an entirely different purpose, that 
of preserving and increasing the deposit of learning, 
the universities had, none the less, their own interests 
to defend, and a multitude of individuals to protect; 
and it is natural that, following the example, either 
of the merchants corporately leagued, or of the com- 
munes emancipated by royal charters, they should 
have sought to strengthen themselves, at first by 
solidarity, by the mutual assistance of all persons 

1 It was under the same king, Philip Augustus, that the Univer- 
sity of Paris began to take form, and that the Parisian Hanse, or 
association of the water-sellers of Paris, was constituted. 

^ See, concerning this interesting question of the points of agree- 
ment between the trade-guilds and the universities, M. Bimbenet's 
work, Histoire de VUniversite de Lois d' Orleans. Paris, 1853, p. 59 
et seq. 



CAUSES OF THE RISE OE UNIVERSITIES 35 

composing them; and afterwards by the participation 
of all their members in the same franchises and 
privileges. 

— "I explain to myself," says a French writei, ••'now 
a single city could in the Miridlo Ages bring together 
bodies of students belonging to different provinces 
and different countries, by the analogy which this 
agglomeration of students bears to the agglomerations 
of traders of different n'ations in certain cities on the 
seacoast, where they have their separate banks, and 
even their separate markets." ^ ^- 



III 

I have described what there was of spontaneity 
in the growth of the universities. But it is none the 
less true that these studious tendencies, these efforts 
at association, would very probably have resulted in 
nothing if they had not obtained the co-operation 
and favor both of the ecclesiastical and civil powers. 
I shall in the first place show this in relation to the 
Church and the popes. 

It is incontestable that the protection, the kindly 
aid, of the papacy was gained from the very begin- 

1 Bouthors, Coutumes de Ficardie, cited by Bimbenet, op. cit., 
p. 73. Bimbenet reproduces several articles from the statutes of 
the guilds, the provisions of which are identical with those con- 
tained in the statutes of the universities; this, for example: "If 
one of the associates fall sick, the brethren shall visit him ; if he 
happen to die, four brethren, nominated by the ancient (the dean) 
shall watch by the dead man, and bury his body; and all the asso- 
ciates shall accompany him. ..." 



36 . ABELARD 

nings of the universities.^ One after another, the 
popes granted, with the most cordial ahacrity, the bulls 
of erection or the confirmations jof privileges solicited 
by the kiiigs and emperors. 

The Church of tne Lh^-^teenth century .was no longer 
minded, as a Council of Carth«.ge had been, to pro- 
scribe the study of letters. Without claiming that 
the court of Eome had become a centre of liberal 
ideas, some progress had been accomplished. The 
days had gone by when a pope, Sylvester II (999- 
1003), was accused by his contemporaries of having 
transactions with the devil, because he had acquired, 
chiefly in the Arabian schools of Spain, a certain 
modicum of science; so that after his death it was 
said : Homagium diabolo fecit et male Jinivit. Toward 
the close of the twelfth century, the chair of St. 
Peter was occupied by such a man as Alexander III 
(1159-1181), who deserved to be called the propug- 
nator of Italian liberties, for his support of the 
league of the Lombard cities against the emperor of 
Germany; at the commencement of the thirteenth 
century, by Innocent III (1198-1216), who needed 
nothing to interest him in the beginnings of the Uni- 
versity of Paris but the recollection that he had 
himself been one of its students ; ^ by Honorius III 
(1216-1227), who deposed a bishop for not having 

1 From 1200 to 1250 the chartularium of the single University of 
Paris contains more than one hundred and fifty pontifical letters, 
granting privileges, regulating studies, etc. 

2 Not only Innocent III, but Honorius III, Gregory IX (1227- 
1241), and still other popes must be reckoned among the students 
of the University of Paris. See Budinsky's work, Die Universitdt 
Paris, Berlin, 187G, p. 189 et seq. 



CAUSES OF THE RISE OF UNIVERSITIES . 37 

read Donatus^ that is to say, for not having studied , 
grammar.^ ■ 

Moreover, the Church had as yet no reason to sus- 
pect an intellectual progress whose representatives 
seemed to haye no other object than that of studying 
the faith, and of submitting themselves intelligently 
to dogmas' henceforward explained and demonstrated 
by a compliant dialectic. The philosophy of that age 
was generally humble and modest — Abelard having 
been scarcely more than an exception — and it did 
not complain of being called the handmaid of the- 
ology, {ancilla theologice). Doubtless the new estab- 
lishments, thanks to the immunities and privileges 
whose possession was assured to them by the popes 
themselves, were more than once destined to be the 
antagonists of the papacy. -But who could then 
divine, in the obscure beginnings, the eclat and the 
ambitions of the future ? Doubtless the universi- 
ties, by the intellectual travail they were- to excite, 
bore the germs of the approaching liberty of thought, 
the Eeformation and free philosophy. But who could 
then suspect that the human mind, encouraged in its 
efforts by the Church, would one day turn against the 
Church, that reason would not always be in accord 
with faith, that science could be something other 
than the confirmation of the traditional beliefs ? 

In generously according their patronage to the uni- 
versities, in favoring the development and diffusion 
of human learning, the popes certainly believed that 
they were laboring only for the glory of God and the 
good of the Church. This conviction is shown in 
1 See Part III, chap. 1. 



38 ABELARD 

the almost identical terms by which, the different 
pontifical bulls urge the importance of letters and the 
sciences. A few extracts will suffice to prove this. 

In 1229, Gregory IX wrote to the king of France, 
Louis IX, to recommend to him the University of 
Paris, then disturbed by a students' riot. He reminds 
him that " wisdom is necessary, and that wisdom is 
nourished by the study of letters." ^ Now, what is 
wisdom, to a pope, except the Christian faith ? In 
1231, in the emphatic language of the time, the same 
pope writes to the Parisian professors and students : ^ 
"Paris, mother of sciences, city of letters, . . . where, 
as in a special factory of wisdom {in officina sapientice 
speciali), . . . skilful men ornament and decorate the 
precious stones of the spouse of Christ. . . ." 

The same language occurs in the fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries. In 1331, in the bull of the foun- 
dation of the University of Cahors, John XXII ex- 
presses himself thus : " After having considered how 
precious is the gift of wisdom and knowledge, and 
how desirable it is to possess them, since by them the 
shadows of ignorance are dissipated {ignorantim tene- 
brce profagantur) and the obscurities of error dis- 
pelled, because they permit the curious intelligence 
of mortals to order and dispose their acts in the light 
of truth; ... we desire ardently and with all our 
heart that the study of letters should everywhere 
flourish and be increasingly developed." ^ 

In 1422, when he erected the little University of 

1 Chartularium universitatis Parisiensis, t. i, p. 128. 

2 Ibid., p. 137. 

3 Baudel, Hisfoire de VUniversite de Cahors, 1876, p. 10. 



CAUSES OF THE RISE OF UNIVERSITIES 39 

Dole, in Burgundy, Martin Y declared that " by the 
study of letters the worship of divine things increases 
{divinorum cultus augetur) and the Catholic faith is 
fortified." ^ 

In 1431, at the time of the foundation of the Uni- 
versity of Poitiers, Eugene IV proclaimed in his 
turn how well the study of letters, by dissipating the 
darkness of ignorance, comports with the public and 
private advantage, both temporal and spiritual, of the 
entire world. "Thanks to them, the worship of God 
is increased {Dei cultus augetur) ; they prepare the 
salvation of souls." ^ 

In 1450, Nicholas V, in granting to the University 
of Barcelona the privileges of the University of Tou- 
louse, considered that, thanks to the new studium 
generate, "the Catholic faith would be extended in 
that region {ibidem fides Catliolica dilatetur) .^' ^ 

It would be superfluous to multiply citations. Al- 
ways and everywhere recur the same expressions, the 
same eulogies for "the pearl of science," the same | 
homage to the universities considered as instruments ( 
for the propagation of faith and piety. It is not the 
only time in the history of humanity that an estab- 
lished power has been seen to prepare the way for 
its own decadence by protecting institutions which 
afterwards rise against it, and little by little promote 
its ruin. Are we not in our own day witnessing an 
analogous spectacle, when in every land we see the 

1 Beaune and d'Arbaumont, Les Universites de la Franche 
Comte, 1870: Pieces justificatives, p. 3. 

2 Privileges de VUniversite de Poitiers, 1726, p. 1. 
2 Vicente de la Fuente, op. cit., t. i, p. 336. 



40 ABELARD 

ruling classes rivalling each other in their ardor to 
multiply public schools, and thus making ready for 
the advent of a new order of things, of a levelling 
of society, the result of which, when accomplished, 
will be to dispossess the ruling classes of their 
privileges ? 

If a decisive proof is wanted of the part which 
the popes expected the universities to play, it will be 
sufficient to examine in what circumstances and for 
what end one of the most important provincial uni- 
versities of France, that of Toulouse, was created in 
the opening years of the thirteenth century. The 
Holy See was at that time occupied with the ques- 
tion of re-establishing the Catholic faith in a region 
disturbed by heresy and the Albigensian war. The 
creation of the Dominican order (1215) and the foun- 
dation of the University of Toulouse were due to the 
same purpose. In 1217, in fact, Honorius III wrote 
to the professors of Paris to invite them to go and 
teach at Toulouse, ^' in that country," said he, " whose 
inhabitants wish to return to God ; where it is neces- 
sary to prevent venomous serpents from entering, and 
where it would be fitting to transplant certain men, 
who, by their lectures, their preaching, and their 
exhortations, would ardently uphold the cause of 
God."^ And in 1233, when he confirmed the erec- 
tion of the new university, instituted by his legate 
in 1229, Gregory IX expressed the hope that "the 
Catholic faith, which seemed to be completely ruined 
in these regions, might again flourish there, if a school 
of letters {stiidium Utterarum) were established." ^ 

1 M. Fournier, op. cit., t. i, p. 437. ^ J^^?., t. i, p. 441. 



CAUSES OF THE KISE OF UNIVERSITIES 41 

The University of Toulouse then, in the opinion of 
the popes, was to be a bulwark established against 
the inroads and progress of heresy, a sort of fortress 
constructed in a hostile country, wherein to shelter 
and protect the orthodox faithful. And this idea 
of seeking a point of vantage in the universities, a 
counteraction to the heretical propaganda, shows itself 
again, and more forcibly, when, in the sixteenth cen- 
tury, the popes, in order to combat the Eeformation, 
authorize the foundation of Jesuit universities, that 
of Pont a Mousson, for example.^ 

IV 

By what idea were the emperors of Germany, the 
kings of France, and the other princes of the Middle 
Ages moved, when they united with the popes to assist 
the rising universities by their favor ? Assuredly, 
it was not so much a disinterested affection for the 
study of science as it was a political forecast. In 
the first place they proposed to embellish and enrich 
their dominions by endowing them with public 
schools whose reputation, once established, might 
attract thither many foreigners, a source of glory, 
and of riches as well. But they thought afterwards 
— and the event more than once proved them to have 
been in the right ^ — that the universities which they 

1 See chap. iii. 

2 In 1688, Louis XIV wrote to the professors of the University of 
Poitiers: "Having seen the zeal and affection you have, both for 
our person and for the conservation of our right and those of our 
States — ." . . . More than once the universities took sides for the 
King of France against the claims of the court of Rome. 



42 ABELARD 

called ^ " their very dear daughters/' would become, ^ 
thanks to the independence they enjoyed, centres of '> 
influence and political action, and a solid support of 
the royal power. " The universities," says M. Liard, 
"are not merely the homes of science. They are also 
schools of public spirit. In all times politicians have 
regarded them as such." ^ Finally, the heads of the 
State hoped that, recognizing the favors with which 
they overwhelmed them, the universities would form 
faithful subjects for the crown, just as the popes 
expected that they would give good Christians to n 
the Church ; that they would be schools of political 
loyalty, as, on the other side, they were to be schools 
of religious faith. 

When Frederick Barbarossa instituted the Uni- 
versity of Bologna, by his decree of 1158, he justified 
the protection he promised to masters and disciples 
by saying that "their science illuminated the entire 
world, and that, thanks to it, subjects learned how 
to live in obedience to God, and to the emperors, 
who are the ministers of God." ^ 

When he confirmed, in 1367, the privileges of the 
university of the city of Cahors, then placed under 
the domination of the English, Edward, Prince of 
Wales, wrote : " It is befitting to crown with all the 
gifts of our munificence those who teach how to dis- 
tinguish the just from the unjust." ^ It is evident 
that the study of law was preferred by princes, as 
the study of theology was preferred by the popes. 

1 M. Liard, Universites et Facultes. Paris, 1890, p. 151. 

2 Coppi, Le Universita Italiane nel 7nedio evo. Firenze, 1880, 
p. 73. 3 Baudel, op. cit., p. 40. 



CAUSES OF THE RISE OF UNIVERSITIES 43 

In 1212, Philip the Pair, regulating the study of 
civil and canonical law at Orleans, declared that the 
science of laws and of written law is profitable for 
the development of reason, directs morals, and by 
doctrine prepares for the practice of justice and the 
understanding of what is customary.'' ^ It is not 
doubtful that considerations of utility attracted the 
sympathies of kings toward the juridical studies 
which would give them prudent counsellors, and 
legists expert in the management of affairs. 

Just as several universities were organized by a 
motu proprio of popes, to combat the progress of 
heresy, so others were created by the will of kings, 
to combat the inroads of foreign politicians. It was 
thus that in 1331, in the midst of the Hundred Years 
war, the King of France, Charles YII, solicited from 
Pope Eugene IV the erection of the University of 
Poitiers. It was a question for him who had been 
derisively called the King of Bourges, of stirring 
up national sentiment by constituting, in a province 
which had remained faithful and French, a new centre 
of influence. And the proof is, that the King of 
England, Henry VI, by a sort of retort, hastened to 
reply to the establishment of the French University 
of Poitiers, by obtaining from the same pope, Eugene 
IV, the foundation of the University of Caen for Nor- 
mandy in 1437, and, in 1441, that of the University of 
Bordeaux for Guienne.^ Similar reasons determined 
Philip II of Spain to install a university at Douai 

1 M. Fournier, op. cif., t, i, p. 36. 

2 See Barckhausen, Statuts et reglements de Vancienne Univer- 
site de Bordeaux. Bordeaux, 1860. 



44 ABELARD 

in 1561.^ So, too, in the fifteenth, century, King Louis 
XI and Pope Pius II agreed to authorize the univer- 
sities of Nantes in Brittany (1460), and of Bourges 
in Berry (1463), the two provinces which sent most 
students to Paris ; they intended, by these creations, 
to reduce and counterbalance the importance of the 
University of Paris, which had compromised itself 
at this epoch by supporting the Pragmatic Sanction 
of Bourges. 

Interests of every sort, then, have presided at the 
formation of the universities. In Italy, says Coppi, 
many studia were founded by the cities with a view 
to increasing the population and the wealth of the 
inhabitants.^ Among this number were Pavia (1361) 
and Perrara (1391). The Kepublic of Florence 
creatTd its university in 1348, to repair the breaches 
made by the pest in its population and prosperity. 

Thus the most diverse causes contributed to the 
birth of the universities and to assuring their suc- 
cess. Nevertheless, that which dominates all the 
rest is that, in a society ignorant until then, the uni- 
versities opened for the first time a free course to / 
the travail of the mind and the search for truth. 
Thenceforward the rude cares of warfare or the prac- 
tices of a blind devotion no longer absorbed the life 
of the Middle Ages. With bad methods, doubtless, 
and within very narrow limits, the universities were, 
notwithstanding, superior schools. They responded 
after their manner to the travail of the mind, the 
vague longing after knowledge which thereafter tor- 

1 See Dehaisnes, V Universite de Douai. Douai, 1866. 

2 Coppi, op. cit., p. 116. 



CAUSES OF THE RISE OF UNIVERSITIES 45 

ments human consciousness. Between the strong- 
hokis of the nobles and the cathedrals of the bishops, 
they were the sanctuaries of study. As was elo- 
quently said at the centenary of the University of 
Montpellier, by Professor M. Croiset: "Everywhere 
in Europe at that time, the two powers of the world, 
the Church and feudalism, attracted all attention, one 
by the boldness of its lofty cathedrals, the other by 
the massiveness of its dungeons. But between these 
two and at their feet, an obscure force is already 
active, composed of ideas in part, and in part of pas- 
sions, a menacing force, aroused by instinct, and which 
does not itself know as yet either all that it wishes, 
or all that it can do." 



/■ 



r 



CHAPTER III 

THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES 

Various and irregular origins of the universities — Denifle's 
classification — Papal or royal institution — The universities often 
grew and were not founded — Chronological list of the univer- 
sities erected in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centu- 
ries — The university movement in the following centuries — II. 
The university-mothers: Paris, Bologna, Oxford, and Salamanca 
— The successors of Abelard — The age of Robert Grosseteste in 
England — Roger Bacon — Bologna and Irnerius — The Univer- 
sity of Salamanca — III. Influence of the University of Paris — 
Universities of Germany — Of England — Of Spain — Of Portu- 
gal — Influence of the University of Bologna — International ex- 
change of scholars — Peter Lombard — Peter of Blois — John of 
Salisbury — Beginnings of the University of Cambridge — The 
United States of mediaeval universities. 



To give a complete idea of the origin of the uni- 
versities, one should be able to relate the particular 
history of each of them, and to enter into details 
incompatible with the plan of this treatise. I must 
be content with certain general views, and set aside 
the particulars which abound, and which permit me 
to say that, during the thirteenth and fourteenth 
centuries at least, no two universities were founded 
under identical conditions. It is only in the fif- 
teenth century that the formalities of institution for 
46 



THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES 47 

new universities were regulated. The civil power, 
a king, an emperor, or some nobleman, took the first 
steps, and solicited the pontifical power for a bull of 
erection. This bull, which was never refused, author- 
ized the creation of the university, conceded privi- 
leges to it, and determined the number of faculties. 
Then the civil power intervened anew and confirmed 
the organization of the univertady by a definite act. 

But in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in 
the period of hesitancy and of laborious births, we 
must not expect to find this precision and this regu- 
larity of form. Sometimes, and most frequently, it 
was the pope who took the initiative ; sometimes it 
was the head of the state. Thus John XXII founded 
the University of Cahors in 1332, and it was only in 
1368 that the Prince of Wales, and in 1370 that 
Louis, Duke of Anjou and lieutenant of the king of 
Prance in Languedoc, conferred upon it the favor 
of a civil institution.^ By an inverse proceeding, 
other universities were created by royal decree and 
waited years for the pontifical consecration. Sala- 
manca was legally established in 1243, by privilege 
of Ferdinand III, king of Leon and C astile ; and did 
not receive a bull from Pope Alexander IV, ap- 
proving the foundation, until 1254.^ So likewise the 
English University of Cambridge had .been already 
recognized by royal authority in 1217 ; it is from 
this year, in fact, that its "earliest authentic legal 
instrument " is dated, an edict of the king, Henry III, 
addressed to all clerks of Cambridge ; but it was 

1 Fournier, op. cit., t. ii, pp. 553-558. 

2 Vicente de la Fuente, op. cit., t. i, pp. 90, 312. 



./ 



48 ABELARD 

only a hundred years later, in 1318, that Pope John 
XXII accorded to Cambridge formal recognition as 
a studium ge7ierale. Sometimes the civil and the 
ecclesiastical authorities were not wholly in agree- 
ment. For example, Clement V erected the Uni- 
versity of Orleans in 1306, through a sentiment of 
gratitude toward th^. schools of that city, where he 
had studied \siw;-"rf)F.. 1312, the King of France, 
Philip the Fair, i iied '^etters-patent which, while 
maintaining the University of Orleans, profoundly 
modified the privileges granted it by the pope.^ 

It is far from true, moreover, that all of the uni- 
versities have had the double institution; many of 
them had to be content, some with a papal bull, 
others with a royal or imperial decree. There are 
even some, and amo;ig the number the most impor- 
tant and the most ancient, which erected them- 
s:elves, so to speak, and which cannot exhibit in their 
chartularium any written act of institution. " The 
earliest universities," says Laurie, '' grew and were 
not founded." 

This is so true that Pere Denifle, in his learned 
work on the universities of the Middle Ages,^ has 
adopted as his principle of classification for the uni- 
versities, and the basis of his labor, this diversity of 
origin. He distinguishes, in effect, four categories 
of universities : 1. The high schools, which organized 
themselves, without a written act of erection {ohne 
Errichtungs-hriefe), — for example, Salernum, Oxford, 

1 Bimbenet, op. cit., p. 15 et seq. 

2 Die Entstehung der Universitaten des Mittelalters bis 1400, 
Berlin, 1885. 



THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES 49 

Cambridge, Angers, Padua, etc. ; 2. Those whose 
establishment was decreed by the pontifical will, — 
Rome, Pisa, Toulouse, Montpellier, Avignon, Cahors, 
etc. ; 3. Those founded by a king or emperor, — 
Arezzo, Palencia, Naples, Orange, Salamanca, etc. ; 
4. Those, finally, and they were the least numerous 
during the period studied by Pere Denifle, -^ that is 
to say, up to 1400, — which had the double investi- 
ture, — Prague, Vienna, etc. 

Very few at the beginning, the universities rapidly 
multiplied themselves with a prodigious fecundity ; 
and by the end of the fifteenth century there were 
already nearly eighty institutions of the sort presid- 
ing over the intellectual movement of Europe. It is 
to be remarked, moreover, that during three hundred 
years this movement went on accelerating from cen- 
tury to century. In the twelfth century there had 
been but a single official institution, — that of Bologna, 
in 1158; in the thirteenth century we reckon nine- 
teen or twenty, most of them between 1200 and 1250 ; 
in the fourteenth, more than twenty-five; in the fif- 
teenth century, thirty. Here is the list, with the 
description of their foundation : ^ — 

1 1 omit a certain number of studia which appear to have 
claimed, unsuccessfully, the title of university; for example, in 
Italy, Reggio, where a school of law flourished toward the end of 
the twelfth century ; Modena, which, after obtaining from Honorius 
III and Frederick III (1225 and 1226) the concession of privileges, 
was unable to stand the competition of Bologna, and ^oon disap- 
peared. It was the same with Vicena (1204), etc. 



^^-^ 



50 ABELARD 

Thirteenth Century 

1200, Paris ; privilege granted by Philip Augustus. 

12 — , Oxford ; whose university constituted itself without any 

official sanction ; the first royal recognition, a charter 

from Henry III, is dated in 1258.1 
12 — , Cambridge ; which sprang from Oxford, and developed 

spontaneously like Oxford ; letters-patent from Henry 

III in 1217 and 1231 ; a bull from Pope John XXII in 
1318. 

12 — , Arezzo ; which likewise dates from the first half of the 
thirteenth century ; imperial recognition from Charles 

IV in 1355. 

1212, Palencia ; ^ in Spain, founded by Alfonso VIII, King of 
Castile. 

1222, Padua; which arose from an emigration of Bolognese 
professors. 

1224, Naples ; Frederick II, Emperor of Germany. 

1224-1228, Verceil ; which arose from an emigration of profes- 
sors from Padua.3 

1229, Toulouse ; Pope Gregory IX. 

1243, Salamanca; Ferdinand . Ill, King of Castile and Leon; 

confirmation in 1254 from Pope Alexander IV. 

1244, Curia Bomana ; Pope Innocent IV ; this school followed 

the popes to Avignon. 

1245, Valencia ; in Spain ; James I, King of Aragon, 

1248, Plaisance ; in Italy; Innocent IV; the Duke of Milan, 
Galeazzo II, confirmed its privileges in 1398. 

1 Laurie affirms that Oxford had been " a true university " from 
1140, and Cambridge from 1200; but he admits that " their univer- 
sity organization took its form about 1230, after the Paris migra- 
tion." Laurie, op. cit., p. 242. 

2 The university of Palencia had but an ephemeral existence. 
St. Dominic studied there. 

3 Verceil was never very important, and soon disappeared. On 
all the Italian universities, see Savigny, Geschichte des romischen 
Bechts. 



THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES 61 

1254, Seville; Alfonso X, the Wise, King of Castile and 
Leon, 

1288, Lisbon ; Denis, King of Portugal ; Pope Nicholas IV 

transferred it to Coimbra in 1308. 

1289, Montpellier ; Pope Nicholas IV. i 

1289, Gray ; Otho IV, Count of Burgundy ; transferred to Dole 

in 1423 by Philip the Good. 
1293, Alcala ; Sancho IV, King of Aragon. 
1295, Famiers ; Pope Boniface VIII. 

Fourteenth Century 

1300, Lerida ; James II, King of Aragon and Sicily. 
1303, Borne ; Pope Boniface VIII. 
1303, Avignon ; Pope Boniface VIII, 

1306, Orleans ; Pope Clement V ; in 1312, King Philip the Fair.2 

1307, Perouse ; Clement V : in 1355, the Emperor Charles IV. 

1308, Coimbra, already organized toward the close of the 

thirteenth century, in 1279 ; successor to the Univer- 
sity of Lisbon. 

1310, Dublin; Pope Clement V. 

1332, Caliors ; Pope John XXII. 

1339, Grenoble; the Dauphin, Humbert II ; Pope Benedict XII. 

1343, Pisa ; Pope Clement VI. 

1346, Valladolid; Pope Clement VL 

1347, Prague ; Pope Clement VI ; in 1348, the Emperor Charles 

IV. 3 

1^49, Florence ; confirmed in 1364 by Charles IV. 
1349, Perpignan; Peter IV, King of Aragon; confirmed in 
1379 by Clement VII. 

1 Montpellier had flourishing schools long before 1289. By 1220, 
the statutes for the teaching of medicine had been drawn up by a 
papal legate. In 1230 St. Louis regulated by an ordinance the 
promotions of the faculty of law. 

2 Orleans had been a university of civil law a hundred years 
before the formal recognition of 1306. 

3 Charles IV took the initiative, and asked the pope to institute 
this university. 



52 ABELARD 

1354, Huesca; Peter IV, King of Aragon ; re-established in 
1464 by Pope Paul II. 

1357, Sienna; from 1321, emigration to Sienna of professors 
from Bologna ; privileges conceded, 1357, by the Em- 
peror Charles IV. 

1361, Pavia ; Charles IV ; in 1389, Boniface VIII. 

1365, Vienna ; the Emperor Ilodolphus IV ; Pope Urban V. 

1365, Geneva ; the Emperor Charles IV. 

1365, Orange ; Charles IV. 

1365, Cracovia ; Casimir III, King of Poland ; Urban V. 

1367, Fibifkirchen, in Hungary ; Urban V. 

1367, Angers; Louis II, Duke of Anjou.i 

1379, Erfurt ; Pope Clement VII. 

1385, Cologne ; Pope Urban VI. 

1385, Heidelberg ; Pope Urban VI. 

1389, Of en ; Boniface IX. 

1391, Ferrara ; Boniface IX ; this university had been estab- 
lished by municipal statutes since 1263. 



Fifteenth Century 

Wurzhurg, 1403 ; Turin, 1405 ; Aix, in Provence, 1409 
Leipsic, 1409 ; St. Andrews, Scotland,. 1412 ; JRostock, 1419 
Dole, 1423 ; Louvain, 1426 ; Poitiers, 1431 ; Caen, 1436 
Bordeaux, 1441 ; Catana, 1445 ; Valence, in France, 1452 
Treves, Glasgow, 1454 ; Freiburg, Greifswald, 1456 ; Basel 
1459 ; Nantes, 1460 ; Besanc^on, 1464 ; Bourges, 1469 ; Ingol 
stadt, 1472 ; Saragossa, 1474 ; Copenhagen, 1475 ; Upsala, 1476 
Tubi7igen, Mayence, 1477 ; Parma, 1482. 

Who could deny, after merely glancing over this long 
enumeration, the importance of the university move- 
ment in the last three centuries of the Middle Ages ? 
Doubtless among these universities many remained 

1 Angers had flourishing schools in the first half of tlie thirteenth 
century. 



THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES 53 

obscure or had no effective existence. Occasionally 
they were but the ephemeral adornment of over- 
ambitious cities which did not possess the resources 
necessary to make great schools prosper. Some of 
them, born of the favoritism of popes or kings, or 
owing their existence to a sort of local vanity, have 
inscribed their modest titles for a few years only in 
the history of the universities. But, on the other 
hand, how many have remained glorious, and main- 
tained to our own day, while undergoing a trans- 
formation, their useful and laborious existence ? 

In the sixteenth century the creations did not 
slacken. The age of the Eenaissance saw the birth 
of more than thirty universities, among them some 
which have left a mark in the history of letters 
and sciences ; for example, Aberdeen (1506), Konigs- 
berg (1542),- Jena (1552), Ley den (1575), Edinburgh 
(1582). Two special causes were added during the 
sixteenth century to those general ones which, in that 
epoch of renovation, were bound to multiply scholastic 
foundations. On the one hand, the Reformation gave 
rise to the institution of Protestant universities — the 
first was that of Marburg, in 1527 ; on the other, the 
creation of the Society of Jesus, among other peda- 
gogic consequences, had that of the establishment of 
Jesuit universities — for example, that of Messina,^ 
which Ignatius of Loyola organized in 1547 by send- 

^ The University of Messina was instituted, on paper, in 1459 
by King John of Sicily. But it was not until 1550 that Pope Paul 
III, at the request of Loyola, granted the bull of erection. The 
Jesuits multiplied in Sicily, and in the eighteenth century they were 
the masters of instruction throughout the island. 



64 ABELARD 

ing several members of his order thither ; and that of 
Pont a Mousson, also, which dates from 1572.^ 

Between 1600 and 1700, although most of the cities 
that were able to support universities were already 
provided with them, we see twenty-one more created, 
chiefly in Germany and Holland, — France and Italy 
having long since attained the maximum that they were 
capable of reaching. Finally, in the eighteenth and 
nineteenth centuries, without speaking of transatlantic 
universities, of those which in America have consti- 
tuted themselves the fortunate rivals and the vigorous 
imitators of the universities of the Old World, more 
than forty new universities have seen the light of 
day in Europe.^ 

II 

But I must go back and keep within the limits of 
my subject. From the thirteenth century, England 
with Oxford, Spain with Salamanca, France with 
Paris, Italy with Bologna, leaving unmentioned the 
universities of less importance, had each a focus of 
instruction whose brilliancy streamed afar. Germany 
was behindhand, — it is true that it has caught up 
very Avell since, — and it was not until the fourteenth 
century that it followed the movement. The first 

1 The University of Pont a Monsson in Lorraine was instituted 
by Duke Charles III, and Pope Gregory XIll. See, concerning this 
university, various opuscules by M. Favier, Nancy, 1878, 1880. 

2 Among this number are Berlin, 1810; Christiania, 1811; St. 
Petersburg, 1819; Brussels, 1834; London, 1836; Athens, 1836. In 
France the Revolution and the Empire suppressed the ancient uni- 
versities, and at the present time the law which proposes to re- 
establish them is being discussed in the French Senate. 



THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES 55 

German university, that of Prague, dates, in fact, 
from 1347. It will be interesting to review rapidly 
the histor}^ of the origins of those great universities 
of the thirteenth century — which one might call the 
mother-universities, because from them nearly all the 
others originated — and to show that similar circum- 
stances presided at their formation. 

At Paris the movement created by Abelard sur- 
vived him. The influx of students from every na- 
tion was prodigious during the second half of the 
thirteenth century, and we are told that it was one 
of the causes which determined Philip Augustus to 
enlarge the circumference of Paris. ^ Men who had 
a great reputation in their time continued Abelard's 
instruction. Among the number was Gilbert de la 
Porree, who taught theology. He also was a her- 
etic, and was persecuted in his turn by St. Ber- 
nard, who procured his condemnation by the Council 
of Eome in 1148.^ After him I may cite Peter Lom- 
bard^ and Maurice de Sully, who succeeded Peter 
Lombard as Bishop of Paris in 1150 ; and who arrived 
as a mendicant, begging his bread, in the city where 
he was afterwards to teach philosophy and theology 
with so much renown, and to occupy its highest eccle- 
siastical dignity.'^ Popes Adrian IV (1154-1159) and 
Innocent IV (1198-1216) studied at Paris during 

1 Juvenal des Ursins, in 1435, afl&rmed that there had been from 
16,000 to 20,000 students in Paris the previous year. Their number 
must have been still more considerable in the thirteenth century, 
when the universities w^ere not yet multiplied. 

2 Gilbert de la Porre'e (1070-1154). 

3 See chapter v. 

4 Maurice de Sully (1105-1196). 



56 ABELARD 

this period. An English, historian enumerates no 
fewer than thirty-two eminent Oxonians who had also 
studied at Paris, and among them Robert Grosseteste 
and Roger Bacon. ^ The schools of Mount Ste. Gene- 
vieve and of St. Victor had their clientele, and the 
cathedral school of Notre Dame continued to flourish. 
And it was not from the ancient palatine school, long 
before dispersed, but ^' from the reunion of the schools 
of logic established on the mountain with the school 
of theology that was in the cloister of Notre Dame, 
that the University of Paris was formed." ^ 

Bologna, like Paris, laid claim to very ancient 
beginnings, and in Dezobry's Dictionnaire de biogra- 
phie et dliistoire (1857) one may read: "The Uni- 
versity of Bologna owes its origin to a school of law 
founded by Theodosius II, in 425, and revived by 
Charlemagne." More enterprising still, certain his- 
torians of the University of Cambridge trace back 
the foundation of their university to the fourth 
century before Jesus Christ. "The year 375 B.C.," 
wrote, in 1574, an adventurous author, " a son of the 
king of Spain, named Cantaber, landed in England, 
founded the town of Cambridge, and there instituted 
a university, composed at first of philosophers and 
astronomers whom he had brought with him from 
the city of Athens." ^ 

Something must be abated from these pretensions 
to antiquity. As a school of law, Bologna does not 

1 Mullinger, op. cit., p. 134. ^ Thurot, op. cit., p. 7. 

3 Concerning these legends, see Mullinger, op. cit., p. 450. The 
fabulous tradition related above proceeds from the English doctor, 
John Caye. 



THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES 57 

appear to date earlier than the twelfth century. In 
the commencement of that century the professors 
of jurisprudence occupied an important position 
there. From 1123 they composed one of the three 
sovereign assemblies of the city of Bologna, — that 
which was called the Council of Credence (Consiglio 
di Credenza). It was in 1137 that Irnerius taught 
there, and he was the true founder of this university, 
as we shall see later on.^ 

In England, for the mother-university, that of 
Oxford, there was a slow and progressive prepara- 
tion. Here we have not to go back to the remote 
beginnings, to the influence exercised in the eighth 
century by the celebrated Bede,^ of whom an English 
writer has said that, ^4n his tomb science was en- 
shrouded during four centuries " ; nor to the part 
played by Alfred the Great, and the efforts to regen- 
erate studies in his realm, which he made in the ninth 
century in imitation of Charlemagne. I need only 
say that at that epoch Oxford possessed flourishing 
schools. They were twice pillaged and destroyed by 
the Danish invasions, but by the eleventh century 
they had regained their old position. The rhetoric of 
Cicero and the logic of Aristotle were studied there.^ 
After having suffered further loss at the time of the 
Norman conquest, Oxford, thanks to the protection of 
Henry I, third son and second successor of William 
the Conqueror, again became a centre of studies. 

1 See Part III, chap, iii, where I shall have occasion to return 
to the founder of the University of Bologna. 

2 Bede, an English monk and historian (673-735). 

3 Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Vinstruction publique en 
Europe, 1869, p. 100. 



58 ABELARD 

Undoubtedly there were then none of those scho- 
lastic palaces which arose there in the course of 
time. It is related that the lecture-halls and the 
houses where the students lodged were built of wood 
and thatched with straw, and were thus at the mercy 
of the fire which devoured them in 1130. But stu- 
dents flocked thither none the less. More than else- 
where, perhaps, the protection of the higher clergy 
was gained in England for the rising universities ; 
and, on the other hand, the religious orders, the 
Franciscans and Dominicans, played a great part in 
the revival of studies. 

One man who has left many memories of himself 
in his own country, Robert Grosseteste (1175-1253), 
contributed particularly toward this movement. The 
first half of the thirteenth century in England has 
been designated ''the age of Robert Grosseteste,"^ 
just as, in France, the first half of the twelfth cen- 
tury might be called the age of Abelard. ^' He was," 
says Laurie, " a patriot and a scholar and a human- 
ist." ^ He had studied at Oxford, at Cambridge, and 
at Paris. After becoming Bishop of Lincoln, he did 
not cease to foster learning : by his writings he 
popularized the works of Aristotle. And it was not 
merely Greek books, in the form of translations, that 
he introduced into the English schools ; MuUinger 
affirms that he sought to attract Greek scholars to 
England. 

One name will serve to show what the intellectual 
development of England was in the thirteenth cen- 

1 Mullinger, The University of Cambridge, 1873, p. 84. 
3 Laurie, op. cit., p. 239. 



THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES 59 

tury, — tliat of the monk Roger Bacon (1214-1294). 
Eoger Bacon, before studying in Paris, had studied 
at Oxford; then he established himself in England. 
By the freedom of his researches and the boldness 
of his experiments he aroused the fanaticism of his 
contemporaries, and was accused of magic. At the 
same time, uniting a love of antiquity to a taste for 
investigation in the natural sciences, he collected the 
masterpieces of classic literature at great expense, 
and, for his time, became a Humanist of the first 
rank. 

The University of Salamanca was the queen of 
Spanish universities. Founded about the year 1200, 
it did not receive its official charter until 1243, 
from the hands of Ferdinand III, King of Castile 
and Leon. But from its very beginning it took its 
place in the first rank, among the great centres of 
instruction. It took part in drawing up the cele- 
brated astronomical tables of the King of Castile, 
Alfonso X, the Wise. Like the University of Paris, 
it was mixed up with the great religious quar- 
rels of the age, and took part in the schism of the 
West by pronouncing for the popes of Avignon.^ 
It must not be forgotten that, later on, in the fif- 
teenth century, it lent a courageous support to 
Christopher Columbus, that it alone had faith in 
the success of his great adventure, and that in the 
Convent of the Dominicans of St. Stephen, whose 
house is still in existence at Salamanca, the project 
of navigation to which the fifteenth century owed 

1 Henry VIH, King of England, consulted it in 1527 concerning 
his divorce from Katharine. 



60 ABELARD 

the discovery of America, was discussed and ap- 
proved. In the sixteenth century the University 
of Salamanca was teaching the Copernican system, 
while Galileo was in prison. More than once it gave 
professors to Bologna and to Paris. ^ The bachelors 
of Salamanca remained celebrated up to the eigh- 
teenth century. All through the Middle Ages, more 
than four thousand students pursued there a course 
of instruction as complete and as various as that 
imparted at Paris. 

The question has been much discussed in Spain as 
to whether or no the University of Salamanca was 
derived from that of Palencia, which was founded 
some years earlier, in 1212.^ What is certain is that 
in the twelfth century there were important schools 
in Salamanca, schools which, like those of Paris, were 
installed in the cloister of the cathedral. It is also 
established that, from the beginning, medical studies 
took an important place in the University of Sala- 
manca ; and that the inspiration of these schools came 
from Arabian physicians. In the tenth century, 
Gerbert, before becoming Pope Sylvester II, went to 
seek in the Mohammedan academies in the south of 
Spain more thorough instruction than he had been 
able to find in the Christian schools of France. The 
presence of the Moors and the brilliancy of Arabian 
science, the philosophy of Averroes, and the medicine 

1 In the sixteenth century, a canon of Salamanca, Peter Cizuelo, 
taught mathematics at Paris ; and, at the same epoch, Bologna bor- 
rowed Ramos de Pareja, who passes for the inventor of modern 
music, from Salamanca. 

2 Vicente de la Fuente, op. cit., t. i, p. 76. 



THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES 61 

of Avicenna, exercised a manifest influence on the 
development of studies at Salamanca. Here, then, 
as elsewhere, there was a scholastic movement which 
preceded royal ordinances ; although the individual 
action of sovereigns particularly favorable to the 
sciences, of a king who was a mathematician and 
astronomer, for example, like Alfonso the Wise, 
may have contributed much to the development of 
the University of Salamanca. 



Ill 

The example once given by the "mother-univer- 
sities," the foundation of other universities was 
merely a question of imitation. Paris especially was 
imitated. "The Universities of Oxford and Cam- 
bridge in England, of Prague, Vienna, Heidelberg, 
and Cologne in Germany, derived their formal consti- 
tution, the tradition of their education, and their 
modes of instruction from Paris. The influence of 
this university has indeed emboldened some writers 
to term her ^ the Sinai of instruction ' in the Middle 
Ages." ^ 

When the Emperor Charles IV organized, in 1348, 
the first German university, that of Prague, which 
had been authorized in 1347 by a bull of Clement VI, 
he drew upon his memories as a former student 
of the University of Paris. As DoUinger says, "in 
memory of his student life in the Eue de Eouarre, he 
wished to have a copy of the University there in his 

1 MuUinger, op. cit., p. 74. 



62 ABELARD 

hereditary kingdom of Bohemia." ^ So, too, in 1385, 
when Pope Urban VI organized the University of 
Heidelberg, still so flourishing, the pontifical bull 
states that the new studiuin generale would be estab- 
lished according to the hallowed formula, ad instar 
studii Parisiensis} Vienna, for its part, whose uni- 
versity dates from 1365, claimed to continue the tra- 
ditions of Athens, of Eome, and of Paris.^ Paris had 
succeeded to the literary capitals of the ancient world. 
Paris, said St. Bonaventura, is the source whence the 
streams of science spread over the whole world. 

In England, French influence shone with no less 
brilliancy. Oxford, which according to Laurie '^was 
entitled to the name ' Universitas ' about 1140," ^ and 
which in any case comprised a great number of stu- 
dents at the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the 
thirteenth century, since in 1209, says a contemporary 
chronicler, when an emigration to Cambridge occurred, 
recesserunt ah Oxonia tria millia dericorum tarn magis- 
trorumquam discipulorum,^ — Oxford was several times 
stimulated and improved by the coming of foreign 
professors from Bologna, and especially from Paris. 
It was Vacarius, a Bolognese, who in 1149 tried to 
install the study of Koman law there ; but it was a 
former student of Paris, an Englishman by birth, 

1 Charles IV, says an author of his time, ordained that " Stu- 
dium Pragense ad modum et consiietudinem studii Parisiensis, 
in quo olim ipse rex in puerilibus constitiitus annis studuerat, in 
omnibus et pe?* omnia dirigeretur et regerctur," Denifle, Die Ent- 
stehung der Universitaten, etc., p. 588. 

2 Denifle, op. cit., etc., p. 382. 3 Denifle, op. cit., etc., p. 605. 

4 Laurie, op. cit., lecture xiii, Oxford and Cambridge. 

5 Denifle, op. cit., p. 242. 



THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES 63 

moreover, Eobert Pulleyne, who in 1130 ^^ endeavored 
to revive the teaching of theology, and succeeded in 
infusing a higher spirit into the Oxford schools." ^ 
Later, in 1228, when, after a students' riot and the 
reprisals provoked by it, the masters and students of 
Paris emigrated in great numbers, it was not only in 
the studious towns of France, in Angers, Orleans, and 
Eheims, that they took shelter, but also in Oxford and 
Cambridge. Henry III, King of England, had invited 
them thither in a letter the text of which has been 
preserved : "Diixi7nus vestrae Universitati signijicandum 
quod si vobis placeat ad regnum nostrum Anglim vos 
transferre . . . civitates, burgos vel villas quascumque 
velitis eligere vobis ad lioc assignabimusJ^ ^ This appeal 
was listened to. The migrating masters repaired in 
part to Oxford, and, says Laurie, "they would carry 
the genius of Paris with them." 

It is hardly necessary to say that the provincial 
universities of France have been, for the most part, 
faithful copies of the University of Paris ; Montpel- 
lier must be excepted, since it drew its inspiration 
partly from Bologna. It is true that, in the papal 
bulls relating to the universities, it is almost invari- 
ably written that they should be organized ad instar 
studii Tolosani. But the University of Toulouse itself, 

1 Robert Pulleyne wrote a book of Sentences, which is thought 
to have suggested that of Peter Lombard, which became the hand- 
book of theology in the schools of the Middle Ages. 

2 Chartularium Univ. Paris., t. i, p. 119. The University Col- 
lege was founded at Oxford four years later, in 1232. In 1240, 
Robert Grosseteste ordered the professors of theology at Oxford 
to conform, in their lectures, to the usages followed at Paris. 
Ibid., p. 169. 



64 ABELAKD 

the most ancient after Paris, was modelled after the 
great Parisian school ; the privileges were the same, 
and, due allowances being made, the studies were 
similar. Through Toulouse, then, it was Paris which 
was copied everywhere, at Orleans, Angers, Poitiers, 
Caen, Bordeaux, etc. 

Even in Spain, where, nevertheless, Bologna and 
Montpellier had much influence, a strictly French 
influence made itself felt. When the King of Ara- 
gon, James II, established the University of Lerida 
in 1300, he affirmed in his decree that "the Holy 
See granted to the new studium the same indul- 
gences, immunities, and favors already granted to the 
Studium of Toulouse." ^ In the previous century, 
Alfonso VIII, King of Castile, had constituted the 
University of Palencia by inviting "masters of the- 
ology and the liberal arts from France and Italy, to 
whom, in order to retain them, he assigned large sal- 
aries " (Sapientes e Gallia et Malia convocavit, quibus 
magna stipendia est largitus)} So, too, it was the 
privileges of the University of Toulouse that Pope 
Nicholas V conceded in 1450 to the University of 
Barcelona. When Pope Paul II restored the Univer- 
sity of Huesca in 1464, he gave it Toulouse, Mont- 
pellier, and Lerida as models. Finally, in the bull of 
Sixtus IV, in favor of the University of Saragossa 
(1474), it is said that the studiuyn generate would be 

1 Vicente de la Fueute, op. cit., t. i, p. 304. 

2 Denifle, op. cit., p. 474. The stipendia, the appointments, natu- 
rally played a great part in the prosperity of universities. An 
inscription, which may still be seen at Salamanca, says of the uni- 
versity of that city: ilia deficientibus stipendiis defecit, — until it 
was reorganized by Alfonso X. 



THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES 65 

founded there ad instar of the Universities of Paris 
and of Lerida. 

It was from France, again, that Portugal borrowed 
in part the first elements of university organization. 
At the close of the thirteenth century, King Alfonso 
III, who had travelled in France, brought back with 
him two scholars, Domingos Jardo, a Portuguese, 
but a doctor of canon law in the University of Paris, 
and Aymeric d'Hebrard, a nobleman of Quercy.^ It 
was with the aid of these two advisers that the kings 
of Portugal proceeded to the establishment of their 
national university, installed successively at Lisbon 
and at Coimbra. 

Next to Paris, the University of Bologna had most 
imitators. The universities of Italy, that of Naples 
excepted, sprang directly or indirectly from Bologna. 
That of Padua, in 1222, was founded by a colony of 
professors from Bologna ; so was that of Sienna, in 
the fourteenth centur^. "The intellectual move- 
ment of the northeast of Italy," M. Eenan has said, 
" is altogether connected with that of Padua. Now 
the Universities of Padua and Bologna were really 
only one, at least as far as the philosophical and medi- 
cal instruction was concerned. The same professors 
migrated nearly every year from one to the other, to 
obtain an increase of their salaries." ^ Bologna, how- 
ever, extended its influence to foreign countries : in 

1 Aymeric d'Hebrard was the preceptor of the son of Alfonso 
III, Denis the Liberal, who founded the University of Lisbon. 
From 1130 it was customary at Coimbra to send certain canons of 
the Order of St. Augustine to study in France. 

2 Renan, Averroes et I'Averroisme, 1852, p. 258. 



66 ABELARD 

France, the Universities of Montpellier and Gre- 
noble were copied after Bologna. It was Placentin, 
a Bolognese, who introduced the study of law at 
Montpellier.^ 

The multiplication of universities would have been 
impossible without these mutual loans and exchanges. 
Throughout the entire Middle Ages, there was a per- 
petual passing to and fro of masters and students 
from one country to another, — from France to Eng- 
land, from Italy to France, and back again, — or, in 
the same country, going in turn from one city to 
another city, from one school to another school. I 
may cite some examples. Peter Lombard, the Master 
of the Sentences, as he is called, the uncontested chief 
of theological instruction in the Middle Ages, whose 
classic work enjoyed so great an authority that, ac- 
cording to Crevier, — who had counted them, — it has 
had 244 commentators — almost as many as Aristotle ; 
Peter Lombard studied successively at Bologna, 
Rheims, and Paris. The successor of Abelard, but 
more circumspect than he in the application of dia- 
lectics to theology, Peter Lombard did not wholly 
escape the criticism of the orthodox, — of theologians 
who were alarmed by the freedom of his logic, and 
who claimed that the subtleties of dialectics were 
"like a fine and minute dust, blinding the eyes of 
those who stir it up." ^ Twenty-six erroneous arti- 
cles are counted up in his doctrines, — making him 
quite a "heretic." He maintained that "Jesus 
Christ, in so far as he was man, was nothing," — a 
proposition from which sprang the sect of "nihilists." 
1 See Part III, chap. iii. ^ Crevier, op. cit. 



THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES 67 

One was a " nihilist " on easy terms in those days. 
So, too, a writer justly celebrated in the twelfth 
century, Peter of Blois, first studied letters and phi- 
losophy at Tours and at Paris, then went to Bologna, 
about 1160, to follow the lectures on law, and after- 
wards returned to Paris to take up theological 
studies. He finally ended his career in England.^ 
This example is particularly striking, because it shows 
how, before the foundation of universities which 
later reunited in the same city and in one centre 
all sorts of studies, a man eager for learning was 
obliged to go seeking, from city to city and in special 
schools, the different branches of human knowl- 
edge. John of Salisbury is another example of how 
these learned peregrinations were then obligatory 
for all students. Born about 1100, at Salisbury, in 
England, we have found him in Paris, in 1136, an 
enthusiastic auditor of-Abelard. He spent not less 
than twelve years in the schools of France, exercis- 
ing hipiself in theology, under the direction of Robert 
of Melun (an Englishman who was teaching at Me- 
lun), in grammar with William of Conches (himself a 
pupil of Bernard of Chartres), and in mathematics and 
rhetoric under other masters. He taught in Paris 
about 1145 ; but he afterwards returned to England, 
where he was for some time attached to the church of 
Canterbury. Then he travelled in Italy, and finally 
returned to France, where he died, Bishop of Chartres, 
in 1180. 

1 Peter of Blois died about 1198, in England, where he had 
become an important personage. See the Histoire litUraire de la 
France, t. xv, p. 341 et seq. 



68 ABELARD 

The beginnings of the University of Cambridge 
show plainly how the displacements and migrations 
of nomadic professors or members of religious orders, 
travelling from one country to another, scattered the 
seed of science on fresh soil. Montalembert thus 
describes the origin of Cambridge : ^' Four Norman 
monks, transplanted from Saint Evroul, in France, to 
Croyland, in England, with the eloquent and learned 
Abbot Joffride, formerly professor at Orleans, con- 
cluded to open a public course of lectures in a 
granary which they hired near the gate of the town 
of Cambridge. But, as neither this granary nor other 
still larger edifices were able to contain the throng 
of men and women who soon hastened to listen to 
them, the monks of Croyland conceived the notion 
of organizing the instruction given by the professors, 
on the plan of the monastic exercises of the order. 
Thus, Brother Odo was deputed to teach grammar, 
according to Priscian and Eemy, at daybreak ; at 
Prime, Brother Terric taught Aristotle's logic with 
the comments of Porphyry and Averroes ; at Tierce, 
Brother William, the rhetoric of Cicero and Quin- 
tilian ; while, on every holiday. Brother Gislebert, 
the most learned member of the community, ex- 
plained the Sacred Scriptures to the priests and to 
the scholars, and, moreover, preached every Sunday 
to the people, in spite of his unfamiliarity with the 
English language. Such was the beginning of the 
University of Cambridge, — a feeble rivulet, which 
soon became, according to the expression of a French 
monk, Peter of Blois, a great stream which fertilized 
all England." 1 

1 De Montalembert, Les Moines d' Occident, t. vii, p. 650. 



THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES 69 

Even after the universities had been constituted, 
the international exchange of students and of mas- 
ters did not cease. The papacy, which protected the 
universities because it counted on directing them, 
aided by its universal domination in facilitating their 
relations and the reciprocal services they rendered 
to each other. It was in vain that certain cities, 
through self-love and local interests, sought to iso- 
late their universities : Florence, for example, prohib- 
ited Florentines to study anywhere but at Florence, 
under penalty of heavy fines. \ A current stronger 
than national rivalry reunited all the universities of 
Europe in a sort of federation. There was then, in 
spite of incessant wars, in spite of invasions, in spite 
of the hatreds between peoples, there was above all 
the frontiers a European alliance of all the superior 
schools, a something like the United States of uni- 
versities. And in this assemblage of almost similar 
schools, it was Paris that held the leadership. Even 
at Bologna, the college of theology, annexed to the 
university by Pope Innocent IV in 1362, was formed 
on the model of the theological faculty of Paris. 
Parisian professors were called to the German uni- 
versities of the fourteenth century. The first rector 
of the University of Heidelberg, Marsilius de Inghen, 
had been rector of the University of Paris. It was 
not a pious illusion, it was truth itself, which inspired 
Duboulay, when, in the title of his book, he described 
most of the other universities as daughters of the 
University of Paris : quce ex eadem communi matre 
excesserunt. 



Part II 

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE EARLY 
UNIVERSITIES 



CHAPTER I 
PRIVILEGES OF THE UNIVERSITIES 

I. The university privileges a derivation from the privileges con— i 
ceded to the Catholic clergy — Privileges an important cause of ; 
the prosperity of the early universities — II. The first university 
privilege that conferred on Bologna by Emperor Frederick I in 
the decree Habita (1158) — Exceptional or internal jurisdiction 
of universities — The right of nontrahi extra — III, Exemption 
from all personal taxes and contributions and from military 
service — IV. The right of cessatio — Historical examples — V. 
Other minor privileges — The privileges and immunities extended 
to all members of a university. 



One might say that there were no privileges, prop- 
erly speaking, in the Middle Ages ; privileges, techni- 
cally speaking, being abrogations of the common law, 
and common law, that is to say, a uniform rule for 
all, not existing at that period. The truth is that 
there were privileges on all sides ; privileges for the 
clergy, privileges for the nobility, privileges for 
the communes and for the cities. Every class of 
men, every community, every city, aspired to live a 
life of its own, to obtain a relative independence, to 
have its special system of jurisprudence. Possessing 
the favor of the spiritual sovereign as well as of the 
temporal ones, the universities had their share at 
once, and a very considerable share, of exceptional 

73 



74 ABELARD 

immunities and franchises. They formed little re- 
publics, states within the state, using, and some- 
times abusing, the very rights which they held from 
kings and from the Holy See, to enter into conflict 
with kings and with the Holy See. Almost exclu- 
sively ecclesiastical at the outset, — for the majority 
of their members belonged to the clergy, — they were 
naturally admitted to a participation in the privileges 
already enjoyed by the religious orders and the mem- 
bers of the Church in general. " The whole body of 
the Catholic clergy," says Gibbon, "was exempted 
from all service, private or public, all municipal 
offices, and all personal taxes and contributions which 
pressed on their fellow-citizens with intolerable weight, 
and the duties of their holy profession were accepted 
at a full discharge of their obligations to the repub- 
lic." So it was that when popes or kings extended 
these exemptions to the rising universities, the city 
governments took no umbrage at it. 

And these privileges, granted in the first place to 
semi-ecclesiastical academic corporations, were pre- 
served by the universities as, little by little, they 
were secularized. The importance of higher study 
justified the favors which had originally been au- 
thorized by religious sentiment. The language of 
the Middle Ages affords proof of this: the word 
dericus, clerk, at first signified one who was studying 
in order to enter the ecclesiastical state. It was 
afterward applied to any learned or educated person. 
The immunities, likewise, which none but ecclesiastics 
had previously profited by, were granted in the twelfth 
and thirteenth centuries to all whom the universities 
sheltered under their patronage. 



PRIVILEGES OF THE UNIVERSITIES 75 

It is to be remarked, moreover, that as a favor 
accorded to the taste for study, the university privi- 
leges of the Middle Ages were not altogether a 
novelty. "At the time of Vespasian, certainly not 
long after," says Laurie,^ "immunities were granted. 
The Medici and the professors of liberal arts, who 
taught in the Eoman capital and large provincial 
towns, were exempted from imperial taxes, from 
service in war, and from discharging municipal 
duties, except when they were desirous to do so. 
These privileges were, of course, extended to the 
University of Constantinople. Constantine, in his 
edict of A.D. 321, continues and confirms past privi- 
leges as they had existed in all parts of the Empire 
(vide Theod. Code, iii, tit. iii, I)." 

That the enjoyment of their privileges, apostolic 
or royal, was one of the chief causes of the prosperity 
of the universities, is demonstrated by every page of 
their history. More than once the University of 
Paris, obliged to defend its threatened exemptions, 
has forcibly demonstrated, in its representations to 
the kings of France, that it could not be divested of 
them without risk of driving away its students, or at 
least sensibly diminishing their number. Who can 
tell the number of masters and of pupils whose de- 
sire for study has been encouraged by the prospect 
of enjoying the favors granted to members of the 
universities ? This will be better understood by 
those who examine with me the nature and impor- 
tance of those privileges. 

1 Laurie, op. cit., p. 200. The Theodosian Code justified the privi- 
leges accorded to the universities by these words: "Quo facilius 
liberalibus studiis et artibus multos instituant." 



76 ABELARD 

II 

The first example of the privileges granted to uni- 
versities must be sought for in the imperial consti- 
tution, the Hahita, promulgated in 1158, at the Diet 
of Koncaglia, by Frederick Barbarossa, to the masters 
and students of Bologna.^ " We will," said the Em- 
peror of Germany in this memorable document, " that 
the students, and above all, the professors of divine 
and sacred laws, may be able to establish themselves 
and dwell in entire security in the cities where the 
study of letters is practised. It is fitting that we 
should shelter them from all harm. Who would 
not have compassion on these men who exile them- 
selves through love of learning, who expose them- 
selves to a thousand dangers, and who, far from 
their kindred and their families, remain defenceless 
among persons who are sometimes of the vilest ? " 
And, in consequence, Frederick I decreed in the first 
place that any person against whom a student had 
to bring a suit, whether it were to demand the pun- 
ishment of an offence or to obtain the payment of 
a debt, this person, though he might dwell in a dis- 
tant province, should be tried in the place where 
the student resided; that is to say, in Bologna. 
Afterwards — and this is the most important point, 
for it contains the principle of an internal or at 
any rate exceptional,, jurisdiction granted to the 
members of the university — the Emperor said : " If 
any person, for any cause whatsoever, wishes to bring 

1 See the complete text of the Hahita of Frederick I, in Coppi's 
work, already cited, p. 73. 



PRIVILEGES OF THE UNIVERSITIES 77 

an action against students, he must cite them, accord- 
ing to their own choice, before their Professor or 
before the Bishop of the city." Thus, on one hand, 
Frederick I granted Bolognese students, when they 
were plaintiffs, the right to summon their adversa- 
ries for judgment to the place of their university 
residence ; and, on the other, when they were ac- 
cused, he freed them from the ordinary jurisdiction 
by leaving them their choice between an ecclesiastic 
or a university tribunal.^ . These two privileges, with 
some variations, were successively granted, either by 
civil governments or pontifical authority, to the dif- 
ferent universities, and, of course, to the professors 
as well as to the students. 

It was thus that, about 1198, a decree of Pope 
Celestine III decided that, for clerics residing in 
Paris, all suits relative to money matters should be 
tried before ecclesiastical and not before secular 
judges. "Bishops and clerics,'' said the pope, "have 
their own judges in fact, and they have nothing in 
common with the laws of the state." ^ And before 
this, about 1170, Alexander III, because of material 
injuries and also of a sentence of excommunication of 
which the students of Eheims complained, hastened 

1 The Latin text says : '' . . . coram domino aut magistro suo, vel 
ipsius civitatis episcopo." The word domino may seem equivocal. 
It has been variously interpreted. Some have sought to translate 
it by seigneur, lord; but Crevier, Savigny, and the majority of 
commentators suppose with reason that dominus simply means 
professor, and that magister was added so as to mark more clearly 
the sense of dominus. At Bologna the professors were often styled 
domini legum. 

2 " . . . nee guidquam est eis publicis commune cum legibus " 
{Chartularium Univ. Paris., t. i, p. 12). 



78 ABELARD 

to recognize the justice of their position "when 
they claim that no one has the right to use violence 
toward them^ nor to dare pronounce against them an 
ecclesiastical sentence, until it shall please them to 
appear judicially before their professors." ^ The popes 
were simply taking the course natural to them when 
they sought to extend the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical 
tribunals. But, which is more remarkable, the kings 
themselves, confirming the decisions of the sovereign 
pontiffs in every point, did not hesitate to limit the 
secular authorities in everything that concerned the 
universities. In 1200, in consequence of a quarrel 
that arose between the students and the citizens, in 
which the Provost of Paris had put himself at the 
head of the armed populace, and a student had been 
slain, Philip Augustus took sides energetically with 
the students. In the first place, he granted them a 
signal reparation. The provost was condemned to 
perpetual imprisonment, unless he preferred to submit 
to the ordeal by water, with the condition that if he 
succumbed under it he should be hanged. But for 
the future, in his ordinance of 1200, which may be 
considered the first official charter of the University 
of Paris, the king decreed that the students should 
be tried only by the ecclesiastical tribunal, that is to 
say, by the Episcopal Court of Paris. No student, 
no matter who he might be, could be arrested by an 
ordinary judge, unless there were urgent necessity 
for it, and with the proviso that he should instantly 
be remitted into the hands of the ecclesiastical judge. 

1 *' . . . donee coram magistro suo velint justitia stare (Ibid.,-p.5, 
et seq.). 



PRIVILEGES OF THE UNIVERSITIES 79 

And as to the chief of the students (capitale scho- 
larium), "our courts/' said the king, "cannot lay 
hands upon him for any crime whatever " ; ^ this was 
to proclaim, before the ordinary court of the provost 
of Paris, the almost absolute inviolability of the 
members of the university. 

At Padua, in 1262, a law provided that the Podesta 
could not interfere in the brawls that occurred among 
the students, unless, at the end of two days, the affair 
had not been settled by the rector and professors.^ 
It is to be noted that in Italy the right of internal 
or university jurisdiction was the rule generally fol- 
lowed in granting privileges, :while in France it was 
the right of ecclesiastical jurisdiction that was most' 
often granted. 

There were, moreover, in Italy, from one university 
to another, and especially from century to century, 
considerable alterations in the judicial power of 
the university officers. The professors and rectors 
grew weary of exercising the functions of a criminal 
court, in which their professorial authority might be 
weakened ; they preferred to retain civil jurisdiction 
only. At Verceil, for example, criminal matters were 
exclusively remitted to the city magistrates. At 
Eome, foreign students might choose as their judges 
either the professors, the cardinal vicar, or the rector 
of the university. At Naples, the criminal jurisdic- 

1 Chartularium Univ. Paris., t. i, p. 59, " . . . In capitale Parisi- 
ensium scholarium pro nullo forifacto justitia nostra manum 
mittet." 

2 Coppi, op. cit., p. 171. The Podesta was an imperial magistrate 
who had been established in place of a consul by Frederick I, 
after his victories in Italy. 



80 ABELARD 

tion fell to a magistrate appointed by the king, who 
was styled the justice {justitiarius) . Civil suits were 
brought either before the justice, the professor, or 
the archbishop, at the choice of the contending par- 
ties. At Turin, the rector took part in the decision, 
even in the criminal cases transferred to the com- 
munal magistrates. 

Certain details are still necessary in order to clear 
up, in the midst of the confusion created in the Middle 
Ages by the multiplicity of jurisdictions of every sort, 
the obscure and complex question of the privileges of 
the universities in this matter. When Gregory IX, 
in 1233, confirmed the foundation of the University 
'of Toulouse, he formally prohibited that "either 
masters or scholars, either clerics or their domestics 
(servientes eorum), if they became guilty of any mis- 
deed, should be judged by a layman." ^ He decreed, 
moreover, that laymen should be bound to appear 
before the ecclesiastical judges in any suits whatever 
that might be brought against them by the students. 
Orleans, Poitiers, Caen, and Bordeaux, whose univer- 
sities were founded on the model of that of Toulouse, 
obtained the same privileges from the popes. 

In the statutes given to the Medical Faculty of 
Montpellier, in 1220, by the Legate of the Holy See 
(which statutes were confirmed in 1258 by Alexan- 
der IV), we read as follows : "The Bishop of Mague- 
lonne, after associating with himself as auxiliaries one 
of the oldest masters, and two other masters chosen 
from among those who are most discreet and honor- 
able {discretiores et laudabiliores) should, in concert 
1 M. Fournier, op. cit., t. i, p. 441. 



PRIVILEGES OF THE UNIVERSITIES 81 

with these auxiliaries, elect a master, either from 
among these three auxiliaries or from the other mas- 
ters, who shall administer justice, both to the masters 
and scholars and to those who shall bring suits against 
masters and scholars." ^ These regulations applied 
to civil suits only ; the Bishop of Maguelonne alone 
took cognizance of criminal matters. 

As may be seen, there were numerous variations 
and a real complication in the rules established for 
the purpose of giving the universities an exceptional 
position before the law. While at Montpellier the 
members of the university were judged in civil ques- 
tions by a university professor, at Paris similar mat- 
ters came under the jurisdiction of the provost, 
constituted as "guardian of privileges." While in 
Italy criminal suits were usually referred to the 
municipal magistrates, in France they were brought 
befor3 the ecclesiastical tribunals. So, too, trials 
relating to benefices held by a member of the Uni- 
versity of Paris were tried, at his choice, before 
the Bishops of Beauvais, of Meaux, or of Senlis.^ 
While admitting that these exceptional jurisdictions 
conferred an incontestable advantage on both masters 
and scholars, it must also be recognized that the 
Church profited by them, since she substituted her 
own courts for the secular ones by imposing ecclesi- 
astical jurisdiction even on laymen who brought suits 
against the members of the universities. The rising 
universities were not, to tell the truth, anything more 

1 M. Fournier, op. cit., t. ii, p. 5. 

2 This was established by a bull of Clement V in 1358. See 
Crevier, op. cit., t. ii, p. 209. 



iti 



\ 



82 ABELARD 

than dismembered parts of the ecclesiastical body; 
and it was only very gradually that they broke the 
filial bonds which united them to the Church. At 
Paris, for example, Parliament little by little ab- 
sorbed the ecclesiastical jurisdiction.^ 

But what the universities preserved to the end was 
the special right conceded by Frederick I to the 
Bolognese, which at Paris was called the right of noii 
trahi extra, which the historians of the Parisian Uni- 
versity name also the committimus, and which the 
kings of France designated in their letters-patent by 
the strange expression du droit de garde gardienne.'^ 
This consisted, as I have already said, in the right 
of the members of the university, whether as defend- 
ants or as plaintiffs, to have their cases tried at their 
place of residence. The University of Poitiers thus 
justified this privilege in 1674: "The masters and 
students could not attend to their suits or prosecute 
them, not, at any rate, without abandoning their 
employments, functions, and studies, if they were 
obliged, to bring them anywhere except before the 
judges of the aforesaid Poitiers."^ 

An example will make the importance of this 
privilege better understood. In 1358, the valets of 
the Bishop of Lisieux had stolen a horse from some 
of the students of the University of Paris. The 

1 In 1446 Charles VII gave the Parliament of Paris the right of 
judging the causes, quarrels, and business matters of the university 
and its members. 

2 By these words, garde gardienne, the king signified that he 
took the universities under his special protection. Gardienne is 
merely a superfluous word used to intensify the sense of garde. 

3 Privileges de V University de Poitiers, p. 27. 



^k 



PRIVILEGES OF THE UNIVERSITIES 83 



University determined to cite the said bishop before 
the Provost of Paris in his chatelet (formerly the \ ^ 

name of a court of justice in Paris). The bishop at ^A. 

first refused to come ; but the University having de- 
cided to make a direct appeal to the king, the bishop, 
"in spite of a serious infirmity by which he was 
afflicted," complied with the injunction to repair to 
Paris.i 

By the right of garde gardienne, therefore, the 
universities could withdraw an adverse party from 
his natural judges. This was assuredly a privilege 
which had its inequitable side, since, for example, it 
made it possible that a person living at the extremity 
of the kingdom might be summoned to Paris. Hence, 
in order to prevent abuses, it became necessary to 
limit the right, and to determine the distance beyond 
which one was no longer amenable to the courts of 
Paris, to two, or four, or six days' journey on horse- 
back.'^ It must be admitted, on the other hand, that 
if this was a very considerable prerogative for the 
universities, it was partly justified in a time when 
local justice, administered in the name of the seigneur 
by the provost or the bailiff, was ignorant and often 
arbitrary, and that there was every advantage in sub- 
stituting for it the regularly administered justice of 
great cities. 

1 Bimbenet, op. cit., p. 131. 

2 An edict of 1722 again confirmed the privilege I speak of, to 
the University of Paris. 



84 ABELARD 

III 

Taxes in the Middle Ages were laid on none but 
commoners and peasants. The nobility and the clergy- 
were exempt from them. Hence, to free masters and 
students from all dues to the State and all municipal 
taxes, was simply to extend to them the privileges of 
the nobility and the clergy. In Italy, as in France 
and Spain, the exemption from fiscal charges was 
complete. All the statutes of the Italian universities 
formally recognized this privilege, says Coppi.^ " The 
privileges of the University of Poitiers said that all 
members of the University must be held free, ac- 
quitted, exempt from all tollage, taxes, duties, loans, 
subsidies, and other assessments." The universities, 
in fact, Avere not merely dispensed from the regular 
imposts ; they were so likewise from the extraordi- 
nary assessments which the depletion of the treasury 
frequently obliged the kings to lay upon the tax-payers. 
In 1440, King Charles VII, in order to meet the ex- 
penses of the war, had laid a tax on wine throughout 
the kingdom at the rate of twenty sous per cask ; 
but on the complaint of the University of Orleans, 
he finally dispensed the students of that city from 
it, saying that would be "exempted from all tax on 
all the wine they had brought thither for drinking 
and other necessities."^ Not long afterwards we see 
Louis XII, and a little later Francis I, exempting 
the masters and students of the University of Poi- 
tiers from any participation in the impost of four 
thousand livres, which he had inflicted upon the in- 

1 Coppi, op. cit., p. 176. 2 Bimbeuet, op. cit., p. 84. 



PKIVILEGES OF THE UNIVERSITIES 85 

habitants of the city of Poitiers, and also from a 
contribution established for the purpose of paying 
the hire of three hundred men of war. 

What are nowadays called town dues (octroi) did 
not exist for the members of universities ; they had 
the right to bring into the cities which they inhabited 
all sorts of provisions both for themselves and for 
their families. At Padua, in 1551, they were granted 
exemption from all duties on wine — an event which 
the students celebrated, the chroniclers say, by mag- 
nij&cent banquets in honor of Bacchus. At Orleans 
the members of the University claimed exemption 
for all articles of consumption in their possession, 
even for those which they sold again. In 1295, 
Philip the Fair decreed that the goods of the mem- 
bers of universities could not be taken or their 
revenues attached under any pretext.^ In a word, 
the fiscal privileges of the universities were absolute, 
and justified this article of the statutes of the Univer- 
sity of Padua : " Students must be considered as citi- 
zens in what concerns the advantages, but not in that 
which concerns the burdens of citizens." ^ 

Exempt from taxes, the university was also exempt 
from military service. And this exemption extended 
not merely to war, but to the obligation of serving in 
the city militia as town guards. It was manifestly 
desired, through a high estimate of the superior 
importance of study, which was possibly not exag- 
gerated, to free both students and professors from 

1 M. Fournier, t. i, p. 8. 

2 " Scolares computentur cives quantum ad comoda et non ad 
incomoda." 



86 ABELARD 

all duties that could distract them from intellectual 
labor. The letters-patent of the kings of France 
constantly reproduce the same formula : they ordain 
that all members of the university shall be exempt 
from all patrolling or sentry duties, except in case of 
imminent peril. As this somewhat vague expression 
of " imminent peril " might give rise to different inter- 
pretations, it was defined. In 1577, Henry III speci- 
fied for Poitiers that there would be imminent peril 
"when the enemy's army should be within five leagues 
of the city " ; and before this, in 1448, Charles VI 
decreed for Orleans that the members of the univer- 
sity were not to take up arms until the enemy was 
ten leagues from the city. 

Similar privileges existed in Italy, but, as it seems, 
they were less extensive there. Exemption from mili- 
tary service was accorded only to the highest members 
of the university. In 1264, an article in the statutes 
of the University of Ferrara, whose title was '' De his 
qui non tenentur ire in exeixitum,^' specified that the 
dispensation was granted only to doctors in law, 
medicine, and the liberal arts. 

Like all university privileges, this one was fre- 
quently contested. In 1467, Louis XI resolved to 
enlist all able-bodied men in Paris, between sixteen 
and sixty years of age, including the members of the 
university. The rector resisted, by calling attention 
to the fact that the profession of arms was incompat- 
ible with that of study, and that the laws of the 
Church exempted the university from military ser- 
vice, and left it no weapon but prayer. He added 
another reason of a more practical kind : namely, that 



PRIVILEGES OF THE UNIVERSITIES 87 

parents would thereafter refuse to send their children 
to Paris if the obligation to bear arms was imposed 
upon them. The representations of the rector were 
effectual, and Louis XI contented himself with re- 
quiring that the university should cause a mass to 
be celebrated weekly for the king.^ It must be said, 
however, to the honor of the universities, that they 
volunteered many times to perform military duties. 
In 1356, Paris being hard pressed by the English, 
the university decided that its members should take 
up arms for the defence of the city at the order of 
the rector. So at Poitiers in the fifteenth century, 
insurrections having broken out in the environs, the 
students called upon the chief municipal officers and 
declared that five hundred or a thousand of them 
were ready to arm in defence of order. 



IV 

One of the most astonishing privileges of the ancient 
universities was the power they had to suspend their 
courses, to go on strike, as we say nowadays, if for 
any reason, they were dissatisfied. This is what was 
called the right of cessatio, which v/as used and abused 
frequently. Things went so far that a university 
was sometimes seen to take flight, and change its 
place of residence on its own exclusive authority : thus, 
about 1320 the University of Orleans, vexed at the 
annoyances to which it had been subjected by the 
citizens of the town, thought it well to move to Kevers, 
where, for that matter, it was very ill received. The 
1 Crevier, t. iv, p. 316. 



V 



88 ABELARD 

inhabitants of Nevers threw the rector's chair into 
the Loire, expressing the hope that, borne by the 
waters of the stream, and "with the assistance of 
the devil," it might return to the city whence it 
came.-^ 

But, without proceeding to these extremities, other 
universities were accustomed to suspend at a mo- 
ment's notice all their exercises until satisfaction had 
been afforded them. In a bull of 1231, Gregory IX 
thus formulated this privilege: ''If an injustice is 
committed towards any one of you," he wrote to the 
masters and students of Paris, "if a serious injury 
like a murder or a wound is inflicted, unless justice 
is rendered you within fifteen days, you are per- 
mitted to suspend your lectures until you have ob- 
tained complete satisfaction."^ The same authoriza- 
tion was given in case a member of the university 
were arrested and unjustly imprisoned. 

I will recall briefly the circumstances under which 
this extraordinary right was granted to the University 
of Paris by the pope. A students' riot had occurred 
during the Carnival of 1229. Bands of half-intoxi- 
cated young men had sacked the house of an innkeeper 
and wounded several persons. The queen-regent, 
Blanche, ordered the Provost of Paris to punish the 
guilty : two students were put to death, " one of 
whom," says Crevier, " was a Norman and the other a 
Fleming, while those who had caused the disorder 
were all natives of Picardy." The university took 

1 Bimbenet, op. cit., p. 88. 

2 Chartularium Univ. Paris., t. i, p. 138, "... liceat vobis usque 
ad satisfactionem condignam suspendere lectio7ies." 



PRIVILEGES OE THE UNIVERSITIES 89 

sides with its pupils and suspended all exercise of 
its functions. But as the queen was in no haste to 
allow the justice of its remonstrances, a great number 
of the professors dispersed, some to other parts of 
France, and others to foreign countries, until not a 
single famous master remained in Paris. The bishop 
launched excommunications against the deserters in 
vain. The pope was obliged to intervene and revoke 
the ecclesiastical censures and penalties, and the king 
made a formal apology in reparation for the wrong 
inflicted on the students, before order was re-estab- 
lished, and the university, victorious at all points, 
decided to resume its courses after an interruption 
of two years.^ 

The right to strike thus recognized as belonging 
to the universities entailed such troublesome conse- 
quences that Pope Alexander IV sought to modify 
it by his bull of 1255, by which he required that no 
suspension of courses should take place unless each 
of the Faculties consented to it by a two-thirds vote.^ 
But the university pointed out with much vigor that 
the right of cessatio was its principal defence, " the 
buckler of the university,'^ and it continued to make 
use of it. 

In 1267, in fact, lectures were again suspended for 
three months, on account of the blows aud wounds 
received by three students. It was not merely the 
scholastic exercises that were intermitted, but the 
sermons also. " In 1407,'' says Crevier, " Advent and 
Lent went by without there being either lectures or 
sermons in Paris, not even on Christmas or Easter, 
1 Crevier, t. i, p. Ml. 2 Chartularimn Univ. Paris. , t. i, p. 273. 



V 



/ 

/ 90 ABELARD 

because tlie provost had caused two ill-conducted 
students to be hanged/' ^ The university threatened 
to leave the kingdom and establish its chairs in a 
foreign country. The provost was obliged to go in 
person and take down the two students from the 
gibbet, kissing them on the mouth, and conducting 
their obsequies with great pomp. 

In 1453, forty students were imprisoned in the 
Chatelet; they were released, but during the tri- 
umphal procession which followed their deliverance, 
a collision with the police took place. A master of 
arts was killed and some students wounded. The 
rector nearly lost his life. The next day the cessatio 
was decreed ; and in order to bring it to a close, Par- 
liament was obliged to ordain that eight archers, or 
ushers, should make the amende lionorahle to the 
university, wearing nothing but their shirts, and car- 
rying lighted torches. The man who had threatened 
the rector had his hand cut off.^ 

The history of the University of Paris is full of 
these peaceful revolts, which ended by tiring out both 
the royal and the pontifical authorities. In 1499, 
the university took offence because Louis XII wished 
to correct certain abuses. Placards were posted 
throughout Paris, announcing a new cessatio, but it 
was a failure. The king, in fact, conceded nothing. 
He went through Paris at the head of his military 
household, armed from head to foot, lance in rest; 
and the university had to give way. This was the 
last cessation.^ 

1 Crevier, t. iii, p. 298. 2 Crevier, t. iv, pp. 197-219. 

3 In 1432, Pope Pius II had already issued a bull interdicting the 
cessations. 



PRIVILEGES OF THE UNIVERSITIES 91 



I have by no means exhausted the list of immu- 
nities granted to the universities of the Middle Ages 
by the favor of princes and of popes. Besides the 
important rights I have already enumerated, there 
were numerous petty privileges, some of which I 
shall indicate, in order to complete the picture. 

Of the University of Turin, founded in 1412, his- 
torians relate the following usages : The troops of 
comedians who gave representations in that city were 
obliged to send eight free tickets of admission to the 
syndic of the students.^ Every liquor-dealer was 
likewise obliged to offer a bottle of brandy and a 
pound of preserves,. and every pastry cook a cake, on 
the feast of the Epiphany. At Orleans, the students 
of the university, divided into four '^Nations," had 
the right to send twelve of their number — that is, 
three from each Kation — gratuitously to the theatre.^ 
The laws of the period protected even the pleasures 
of the students, and Savigny relates that at Bologna 
the Jews were compelled to offer one hundred and 
four livres and a half to the University of Law, and 
seventy livres to the University of Arts, for the fetes 
of the Carnival. 

Sometimes the privileges were conceded to a frac- 
tion only of the university ! Thus, a general prohi- 
bition forbade the students to carry weapons. The 
brawls and riots which the ebullition of juvenile 
spirits often gave rise to, justified this policy only too 
well. The popes declared in their bulls that students 

1 Coppi, op. cit., p. 185. 2 Bimbenet, op. cit., p. 111. 



/ 



92 ABELARD 

who sliould violate this rule were excommunicated 
ipso facto} And yet we see that at Orleans students 
belonging to the German Nation were authorized by- 
Henry IV, in 1600, "to carry sword, dagger, and 
pistols, which is," added the King of France, "the 
true mark of noble birth." It is to be remarked, 
moreover, that the universities of the Middle Ages, 
both in Italy and in France, students of German 
extraction were nearly always treated with particular 
favor.^ 

Further, the members of the universities enjoyed a 
certain number of immunities of a specially ecclesias- 
tical character. Both masters and students had a 
right to receive the revenues accruing from their 
benefices during seven years, and sometimes during 
ten years, of non-residence. In 1331, John XXII 
permitted any ecclesiastic who desired to follow the 
courses of theology and of canon law at Cahors to 
abandon his cure or his benefice if he provided a sub- 
stitute accepted by his bishop. On several occasions 
the popes proclaimed that no excommunication could 
affect the heads of universities without a special edict 
from the Holy See.^ 

It remains to be noted that the privileges of the 
universities were not conferred on masters and stu- 
dents only : they pertained equally to all those who 
participated in any degree in the service of the uni- 
versity ; to the inferior agents who were then styled 

1 Crevier, t. i, p. 353. 

2 " At the University of Bologna," says Coppi {op. cit., p. 158), 
" the German ' Nation ' was the most privileged of all." 

3 Crevier, t. i, pp. 290, 361, etc. 



PRIVILEGES OF THE UNIVERSITIES 93 

supposita, to subordinates, beadles, scribes, registrars ; 
to the messengers who played such a great part in 
the universities of the Middle Ages ; and, finally, to 
the servants and domestics (famulanti) of masters 
and students. The enjoyment of privileges extended 
even to the tradesmen who furnished books and paper 
to the students, to parchment makers, librarians, 
etc. At the outset all librarians enjoyed the various 
immunities of the university: librarians were rare 
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Later, 
when the profession increased in number, the privi- 
leged librarians were reduced to one or two for each 
university. At Orleans things went so far that in 
1521 a demand was made, though in vain, that the 
clock-maker and the bell-ringer of the university 
should be exempted from all taxes and other charges, 
as well as the rector and the professors. Naturally, 
there were abuses. Many called themselves students 
who were not such, seeking to usurp a title which 
conferred such great advantages. 

Each university, then, sheltered under its protection 
a considerable number of persons, and it need not be 
wondered at that privileges so important in them- 
selves, and so widely distributed, should have been 
frequently contested. The universities had to struggle 
with the municipal authorities, who could not but 
regard with jealousy the independence of these scho- 
lastic societies, autonomous and all-powerful. They 
had to contend also with the inhabitants, who, although 
in general well-disposed toward the universities from 
which they derived honor and profit, sometimes be- 
held with displeasure a large number of young for- 



94 ABELARD 

eigners^ freed from all those financial obligations 
which weighed upon themselves all the more heavily 
because they were not shared by every one. 

But notwithstanding the complaints arising from 
private interests or corporate jealousies, the universi- 
ties maintained their privileged position to the end ; 
and it must be acknowledged that in guarding it for 
them, the public authorities of the Middle Ages hon- 
ored themselves and testified their zeal for intellec- 
tual labor. There was, on the part of kings as well as 
on that of popes, a sort of conspiracy in favor of the 
universities. On every page of the Chariulariiim of 
each of them may be found documents which bear 
witness to an unceasing solicitude for their welfare. 
It is Philip the Fair who decrees that the student, 
if arrested, shall be treated with every mark of re- 
spect while in prison, and even released on bail. It 
is Innocent III who enjoins the Bishop of Toulouse 
to receive poor students in the hospitals of the city, 
and who takes the trouble to write to the count, the 
consul, and the people of Toulouse to thank them for 
their good will toward the university. It is Philip 
the Fair, once more, who orders the inhabitants and 
merchants of the city of Orleans to sell provisions 
and let houses to the students at the most just price. 
It is St. Louis who, going to church at daybreak, and 
receiving on his head the contents of a pot which an 
early-rising student was emptying out of a window, 

1 It appears that, especially at the outset, the privileges of cer- 
tain universities were chiefly reserved for foreigners, whom it was 
necessary to protect against the possible vexations proceeding from 
the citizens, the inhabitants of the city. 



PRIVILEGES OF THE UNIVERSITIES 95 

instead of being angered, conferred a prebendaryship 
on the student as a reward for getting up at such an. 
early hour to study. 

The student of the Middle Ages somewhat resembled 
the Roman citizen of former times, who made himself 
respected by all with the simple words : Civis Boma- 
nus sum. Strong by reason of the concessions made 
individually to each of its members, the university 
found another source of power in the fact that it was 
an organized body, administering itself. From this 
point of view, and in all matters which concerned its 
general interests, the University of Paris claimed to 
depend on no one but the king or the pope, according 
as the violations it had to complain of arose from the 
civil or the ecclesiastical power. So, too, the Univer- 
sity of Padua called on the Venetian Senate. Every- 
where, in a word, the universities were freed from 
the control of the local authorities, and recognized no 
other sovereigns than the head of the Church and 
the head of the State, and not always yielding even 
to them. And it may be permissible to conclude that 
possibly they maintained their prosperity more on 
account of their privileges than by the attraction of 
their teaching. 



CHAPTER II 

NATIONS AND FACULTIES 

I. The Nations — Public character of lessons in the university- 
schools — Great gatherings of students — Natural tendency to 
union between the students of the same country — Constitution 
of the Nations as free self-governing societies — The Nations 
in the University of Paris — They constitute the Faculty of Arts 
alone — Other methods of organization — Advantages and dis- 
advantages of the distribution into Nations — II. The Faculties 

— Original meaning of the word — Specialization of studies — 
Growth of the four traditional Faculties in the University of Paris 

— Faculty of Arts, the first constituted — The superior Faculties : 
theology, civil and canon law, medicine — The " colleges " of Bo- 
logna — The four Faculties did not exist at all universities. 

Among the characteristics which distinguish a uni- 
versity of the Middle Ages, making it something new 
in the world and truly original, there are two particu- 
larly important ones, which will form the subject of 
this chapter. These are, on the one hand, the fact 
that the university courses are public ; ^ that the 

1 It was only in the sixteenth century that the public courses of 
philosophy, given in the famous Rue du Fouarre at Paris, finally 
ceased, and that the colleges, that is to say, private schools, com- 
pletely absorbed the instruction of the Faculty of Arts. Ramus, the 
reformer of the University of Paris, complains strongly of it; he 
says with regret that instruction in philosophy is henceforth to be 
given privately, in each college; "it is not long ago," he adds, 
"that the last public lecturer in philosophy died." — Avertisse- 
ments sur la reformation de V University de Paris. 
96 



NATIONS AND FACULTIES 97 

lectures are not given behind closed doors, in a pri- 
vate school; that admittance is given freely to all 
classes, to men of mature years as well as to youths, 
to foreigners as well as natives. And, on the other 
hand, the fact that the different branches of human 
knowledge are already divided, separated one from 
another, and confided to special professors. To the 
state of educational chaos, so to speak, whose previous 
existence in the episcopal or monastic schools is testi- 
fied to by the confused mingling of the seven liberal 
arts, the trivium and quadrivium, has succeeded the 
orderly distribution of the different matters to be 
taught and studied, the differentiation of theology 
and law, of medicine and of arts. It is true, that 
under arts was still included a confused medley of 
studies which were afterwards to constitute the inde- 
pendent categories of science and literature ; and no 
line was drawn between secondary and superior in- 
struction, which were not distinguished into two 
grades until a later time. 

" Publicity " and " specialization," then, are two 
characteristic traits of early university organization ; 
and with each of them essential facts are connected, 
— the establishment of Nations with the first, and the 
institution of Faculties with the second. 



In essaying to delineate university life at Sala- 
manca during the Middle Ages, a French writer thus 
expresses himself: "The students form a population 
apart in the city, having its customs, manners, its dis- 



98 ABELAKD 

trict and even its courts, completely distinct from 
those of the bourgeois and the merchants. On a sum- 
mer evening you see the students going about in 
bands, wearing gowns of the same pattern ; those be- 
longing to the same kingdoms make groups together. 
These are the haughty Castilians passing by ; young 
as they are, they hardly know what it is to laugh. 
But what a contrast yonder ! The Andalusians are 
singing at the top of their voices as they walk. They 
carry guitars and tambourines, and are followed by a 
crowd of urchins who fill the street with their cries. 
See what handsome fellows they are ! What an alert 
bearing ! And what a costume ! They have torn 
their gowns on purpose, as well as the long, black 
cloaks which they wear with an impudent air. They 
have fixed three plumes in their hats." ^ 

What the imagination of this author has seen from 
afar in the streets of Salamanca in the Middle Ages, 
might have been seen everywhere at that epoch. In 
every place the students, thanks to the university 
privileges, formed a separate caste, as it were a scho- 
lastic city thrown into the permanent city and often 
more populous than it was. But everywhere, also, 
they separated into distinct groups according to their 
nationalities, and preserved the manners and customs 
of their countries, as happens still in the universities 
of Germany and Switzerland. 

The " Nations," therefore, had their raison d^^tre in 
the universities of the thirteenth century, in the 
diverse origins of the students who were attracted to 

1 Revue inter nationale de Venseignement, Paris, 1883, article de 
M. Graux : L'Universite de Salamauque in 1875. 



I 



NATIONS AND FACULTIES 99 

the same city, not only from all provinces of one 
country, but from foreign lands as well, by the reputa- 
tion of the schools established there. Assuredly there 
were not to be found in all the university cities groups 
of pupils as large as those brought together at Paris 
or Bologna by the renown of Abelard or Irnerius. 
Italian historians speak of ten thousand students in 
the thirteenth century, and of fifteen thousand in the 
fifteenth.^ We have seen what an extraordinary 
number of auditors thronged the lectures of Abelard 
at Paris. " The number of clerics," says a chronicler 
of the time, "had come to surpass that of the laity,'' 
that is to say, of the ordinary citizens.^ But even in 
the least important cities the scholastic population 
was considerable ; and no one will be surprised at it 
who reflects that studies were at this time almost ex- 
clusively concentrated in the universities. Nowadays 
young men who study are scattered throughout all 
parts of their country ; each city has its colleges and 
schools. In the thirteenth century they were obliged 
to meet each other in the comparatively few cities 
which possessed universities. Por want of books they 
could not study at home, but were obliged to go to a 
distance to follow the lectures of one or another re- 
nowned professor. Their ardor for knowledge made 
them willingly expatriate themselves, in spite of all 
difficulties and obstacles. Felix Plater, a German 
who studied at Montpellier in the sixteenth century, 
relates that, starting from Basel, it took him twenty 
days to reach the end of his journey ; that his 

iCoppi, op. cit., p. 117. 

^ Chartulariwn Univ. Paris., t. i, p. 20. 



100 ABELAED 

companions and himself escaped the dangers that 
threatened them only by chance.^ At Montpellier the 
average number of students was at least a thousand.^ 
Bimbenet reminds us that the chroniclers of the time 
speak of five thousand students at Orleans in the 
fourteenth century. At Poitiers, in the days of its 
greatest prosperity, in the sixteenth century, some 
estimate the number of students at two thousand, 
others at four thousand. In 1554, four thousand 
auditors followed the lectures in law given by Coras 
in Toulouse. 

Some exaggeration may doubtless be suspected in 
these somewhat fabulous figures. It is none the 
less true that, at least in the great universities, enor- 
mous numbers were assembled, comprising scholars 
of all ages, conditions, and nationalities. And that 
in these scholastic multitudes the students from each 
province and country should have felt naturally drawn 
together, and sought to live in greater intimacy, to 
associate with each other, and to install themselves 
in the same houses (hospitla), can be readily under- 
stood. It must not be forgotten that a part of these 
youths, self-exiled through their love of knowledge, 
were poor, and that they were often confronted with 
the difficulties of making a living. Moreover, when 
the police, even in great cities, were not as strictly 
regulated as they are to-day, and when the majority 
of the students were more or less foreigners, sepa- 

1 Felix Plater, a celebrated physician (1536-1614) ; he taught 
for fifty-four years at Basel. 

2 See the Fetes da VJeme Centenaire de I'universite de Montpellier , 
1891. Discours de M. Croiset, p. 62. 



NATIONS AND FACULTIES 101 

rated from their families, and isolated by the diffi- 
culty of communication as well as by distance, it 
was entirely natural that each nationality should 
seek by an intimate union a sort of leverage, a 
material and moral force, which might enable it to 
protect itself. 

These were precisely the reasons by which the 
kings justified the privileges granted to the universi- 
ties. ^'We believe," said Philip the Fair in 1312, 
"that it is right to have a great respect for the 
labors, the vigils, the drudgery, the deprivations, the 
pains and perils encountered by the students in order 
to acquire the precious pearl of science, and that it is 
just to consider how they have left their friends, their 
relatives, and their country, how they have abandoned 
their goods and their fortunes. . . ." ^ But these were 
also the reasons which, within the precincts of the 
privileged universities, determined the special asso- 
ciations known as " Nations." " We are here,'' said 
the professors and students of the University of Paris 
in 1231, "we are here as foreigners, without the 
support of relatives or friends, exposed each day to 
atrocious insults which touch even our persons." ^ 

Let us now examine, in the history of the Uni- 
versity of Paris, under what form the "Nations," 
which had at first been nothing more than colonies 
of masters and students of similar origin, organized 
themselves into veritable corporations, each with its 
relative autonomy and its distinct leaders, "consti- 
tuting," as Laurie says, "free self-governing societies 
within the universities." 

1 Crevier, t. ii, p. 140. 2 Crevier, t. i, p. 420. 



102 ABELARD 

The precise date of the organization at Paris of the 
four Nations which maintained themselves there until 
the latest days of the university escapes the most 
minute research. Neither for the Nations nor for 
the Faculties was there any sudden blossoming, but 
rather a slow evolution, an insensible preparation for 
a definite condition. Already at the close of the 
twelfth century there is mention in contemporary 
documents of the various provinces of the school of 
Paris. The Nations are mentioned in the bulls of 
Gregory IX (1231) and of Innocent IV (1245). In 
1245, they already elect their attendants, the beadles. 
In 1249, the existence of the four Nations — Erance, 
Picardy, Normandy, and England — is proved by 
their quarrels over the election of a rector.^ In 1255, 
a letter addressed to the pope by the masters and 
students is stamped with the seal of the four Nations. 
In 1266 there were new discords, a new university 
schism, which, like the ecclesiastical schism resulting 
in two popes, ended in the election of two rectors, 
one for the French Nation, and one for the other 
three.2 

Without quoting further from important documents, 
it appears from those I have cited that the four Na- 
tions, with their claims and prerogatives and pri- 

1 The English " Nation " comprised all the countries of the north 
and east which were actually foreign to France. In the fifteenth 
century, the name "English" having become odious, the English 
Nation was rechristened and became the German Nation. 

2 According to Deniiie, the four Nations were constituted be- 
tween 1215 and 1222, at the period when the university, then in 
process of formation, had most to contend with from the chancellor 
and chapter of Notre Dame. 



NATIONS AND FACULTIES 103 

vate sealSj were constituted in the first half of the 
twelfth century. In 1250, the Faculties of Theology, 
Law, and Medicine were not yet organized bodies; 
they .were not detached from the rest of the uni- 
versity to live a life of their own. At this epoch, 
therefore, the four Nations made up the entire uni- 
versity. Each of them had its chief, elected from 
among themselves, who was called the procurator. 
This title, which appears for the first time in 1218, 
in a bull of Honorius III, was preserved during 
the whole existence of the universities ; and there 
were procurators of Nations almost everywhere, in 
Italy, Spain, and Germany. The four Nations joined, 
each casting an equal vote, in the election of the rec- 
tor, who was at first merely the chief of the four Na- 
tions. Each of them deliberated separately, and was 
represented by its procurator only in the General As- 
sembly ; each made its own regulations, and collected 
and expended its own revenues. It was on this last 
account that each Nation, although it counted only as 
a single voice in the common deliberations and in the 
election of the rector, desired to be as large as pos- 
sible ; and there is proof that there was wrangling and 
pettifogging between Nation and Nation, and unfair 
advantage taken of cases of doubtful nationalities in 
order to lay claim to a particular student.^ 

Until the definitive constitution of the Faculties, 
that is, until 1270 or 1280, the four Nations included 

1 The Nations were subdivided, moreover, into smaller groups, 
the tribes. At Paris, for example, the French Nation was com- 
posed of five tribes or provinces : Paris, Sens, Rheims, Tours, and 
Bourges. 



104 ABELARD 

the totality of students and masters. After the for- 
mation of the FacultieSj the four Nations comprised 
only the members of the Faculty of Arts and those 

fudents of other Faculties who had not yet obtained \ 
e grade of Bachelor of Arts. The_three,,§3ipfirior / 
iculties, Theology, Medicine, and Law, had nothing } 
common thenceforward with the Nations. In spite J 
of some uncertainties at the beginning — it seems, in 
fact, that the Faculty of Arts had had an existence in- 
dependently of the four Nations in the second half of 
the thirteenth century — from the commencement of 
the fourteenth century and until the end, the Nations 
were the four distinct companies which constituted 
the Faculty of Arts. It was in this way that the Uni- 
versity of Paris, in its complete form, was composed 
of seven companies : the three Superior Faculties and 
the four Nations, each having a deliberative voice in 

(the general assemblies, and in their totality appoint- 
ing seven delegates whenever a deputation was to be 
sent to the pope or to the king.^ 

What is peculiar to the University of Paris in the 
picture that I have just drawn, is the distinction be- 
tween the four Nations (composing the Faculty of 
Arts) and the three other Faculties. In the other 
universities of the Middle Ages, all the Faculties, 
both masters and students, were distributed among 
the different Nations, the number of which, more- 
over, was extremely variable. And, in fact, this sec- 
ond method of organization was the more rational. 

1 In 1509, for example, the University Assembly was composed of 
the three deans of the Superior Faculties and the four procurators 
of the Nations, presided over by the rector. 



NATIONS AND FACULTIES 105 

That it was not followed at Paris was chiefly because 
of the preponderance always held in this university 
by the Faculty of Arts, whether by reason of the im- 
portance of the studies it controlled, or by the number 
of its masters and students. 

At Bologna, as at Paris, the Nations were consti- 
tuted in the early years of the thirteenth century, but 
under a slightly different form. There the students 
were grouped in two distinct associations, the Ultra- 
montanes and the Oitramontanes, the foreigners and 
the Italians, who formed two universities, the Trans- 
alpine and the Cisalpine, each with its chiefs, who 
were not styled procurators but counsellors ; the first 
was composed of eighteen Nations and the second of 
seventeen.' At Padua twenty-two Nations were enu- 
merated. Montpellier had only three in 1339, — the 
Catalans, the Bnrgundians, the Provencals ; each sub- 
divided, however, into numerous groups. Orleans had 
ten : France, Germany, Lorraine, Burgundy, Cham- 
pagne, Picardy, Normandy, Touraine, Guyanne, and 
Scotland ; Poitiers had four : France, Aquitaine, Tou- 
raine, and Berry ; Prague had four also, in imitation 
of Paris ; Lerida had twelve, in imitation of Bologna, 
etc.2 

But, whether more or less numerous, and whatever 
their special organization, the Nations in all the univer- 
sities bore witness to that need of association which 

1 At Bologna the students who helonged to the town of Bologna 
were not included in the Nations. 

2 In the English universities of Oxford and Cambridge the divis- 
ion into "Nations" was to some extent represented by that of 
North and South. See Mullinger, op. cit., p. 135. 



106 ABELARD 

is one of tlie characteristics of the Middle Ages, and 
which manifested itself at the same epoch in so many 
ways, in the establishment of trade-guilds as well as 
in the foundation of religious orders. By setting nat- 
ural boundaries to the army of students, they exercised 
a great influence on the development of the universi- 
ties : they regulated their action. They were, to a cer- 
tain degree, lay communities, assuring to their mem- 
bers all the benefits and advantages of association. 
They had all the qualities which belong to party 
spirit ; they had its defects likewise. And since the 
evil must be told as well as the good, one of the con- 
sequences of their organization was to prevent the 
blending and fusion of races, and to maintain the dis- 
tinction of provinces and nationalities among the 
pupils of the same university. Each Nation, in fact, 
jealously preserved the customs and the language of 
its province or country. Each had its special patron. 
At Paris, the Nation of France invoked St. Thomas 
of Canterbury, and later, St. William of Bourges, a 
former student of the university. St. Romanus, Arch- 
bishop of Eouen, was the patron of the Nation of 
Normandy. St. Charlemagne, after others, became pa- 
tron of the Nation of Germany. But if the different 
patrons of the Nations, all borrowed from the cata- 
logue of Saints, were in harmony among themselves, 
it was far different with the Nations, for they barely 
understood each other. Eivalries and antipathies be- 
tween one people and another were carried to the 
very benches of their common school and engendered 
a thousand quarrels there. To prove this it is suffi- 
cient to recall the ungracious epithets bandied between 



NATIONS AND FACULTIES 107 

the Nations, at a time wlien tlie English were called 
^'drunkards and cowards," the French ^^ proud and 
effeminate," the Germans " choleric, gluttonous, and 
dirty"; when the Normans were accused of being 
"charlatans and boasters," the Burgundians "brutal 
and stupid," the Flemings "bloody and incendiary 
men " ; or when with less violence as to form, but 
with the same tendency to particularism, people spoke 
of the "dancers of Orleans," the "tennis players of 
Poitiers," the " dirty fellows of Paris," or the " lovers 
from Turin." 

II 

In its present signification, a "Faculty" (Faculty 
of Law, Medicine, etc.) is a scientific or literary body 
charged with a special branch of instruction in a uni- 
versity. As a matter of fact, it was much in this 
same sense that the Middle Ages understood Facul- 
ties. Duboulay thus defines the word : " A body, an 
association (sodalitium) of members devoted to special 
studies (certce alicui discipUnce) J^ But in the earliest 
times " Faculty " seems to have been merely a syno- 
nym of science and of art. Thus, in the statutes of 
the University of Naples, Frederic II speaks, in 1224, 
of those who chirurgice facultatem instruunt ; that is, of 
those who practise the art of surgery. So too at Paris, 
in the first half of the thirteenth century, Crevier 
establishes by authentic texts tliat " faculty " was the 
equivalent of "class of studies." For example, in 
1251, in a regulation of the university, after the 
enumeration of the arts and sciences taught there 
"theology, canon law, medicine, arts and grammar," 



108 ABELARD 

it is said : " those who study in the aforesaid facul- 
ties." Now, grammar never having constituted a fifth 
Faculty in the later sense of the word, it is evident 
that the expression was here employed in its wide 
signification of " knowledge," of " special science." ^ 

At what epoch the four Faculties of the Middle 
Ages were constituted as so many societies, bodies 
independent of each other, although reunited under 
the common laws of each university, it is difficult to 
say with precision. The University of Paris, for 
example, was already in existence; the general asso- 
ciation of masters and scholars had been an accom- 
plished fact siuce 1200 ; in 1208, Innocent III had 
addressed instructions " to all the doctors of theology, 
canon law, and liberal arts established at Paris, uni- 
versis doctoribus sacrce paginm, etc. ; the university 
had acted as a single person in 1221 by a formal dona- 
tion to a religious order, styling itself Universitas 
magistrorum et scholarium;^ in a word, it had been 
constituted for many years as a centre of studies; 
and yet, in the middle of the thirteenth century, 
there is still no sign of anything which resembles a 
regular and formal distribution of students and pro- 
fessors into separate Faculties. 

The formation of Faculties was the work of time. 
Studies developed in different directions ; the number 
of scholars and masters in each specialty multiplied 
before the scientific 'species which we call a Faculty 
assumed its later form. Brought together by the 
similarity of their labors, the professors of each 

1 Crevier, t. i, p. 375. 

2 Chartulariimi Univ. Paris., t. i, p. 99. 



NATIONS AND FACULTIES 109 

branch of study at first grouped themselves spon- 
taneously, in order to regulate all that related to 
their special science and their own students. Differ- 
ent statutes for the masters in theology and the mas- 
ters of arts were established in 1215 by the papal 
legate, Eobert de CourQon.^ But the distinction of 
Faculties does not clearly appear, notwithstanding, 
until much later, in the second half of the thirteenth 
century. The Faculty of Law did not have its own 
seal until 1271. The seal of the Faculty of Medicine 
is mentioned for the first time in 1274 ; and the same 
Faculty did not have its first dean until 1265 or 1268. 
It is from the confused mass of studies called 
the "liberal arts" that, like several branches from 
one stem, the Faculties gradually sprang forth: the 
Faculty of Theology first of all, towards 1260. This, 
if we may credit Duboulay a,nd Crevier,^ on the 
occasion of the bull of Alexander III (1257) which 
had opened the university to all the religious orders, 
to the Carmelites and Augustinians as well as to the 
Dominicans and Franciscans. Naturally, it was as 
theologians, and in order to obtain the doctorate in 
theology, that these monks had forced the door of 
the university. Those of the university professors 
who already made a special branch of theology were 
the only ones who received them favorably, while 
the masters of arts displayed the most lively repug- 
nance at admitting the members of religious orders, 
whom they looked upon as intruders. The theolo- 
gians were in consequence led to form a separate 

1 Chartularium Univ. Paris., t. i, p. 78. 

2 Crevier, t. i, p. 460. 



110 ABELARD 

group, andj without separating from tlie university, 
to constitute themselves a distinct Faculty. 

During the years which succeeded, between 1260 
and 1280, the Faculties of Canon Law or Decrees, and 
of Medicine, likewise organized themselves. In 1271 
or 1272, as we have said already, the Faculty of Law, 
in spite of the opposition of the Chancellor of Notre 
Dame, at last possessed a seal of its own.^ It must 
be noted that in the statutes of Eobert de Courgon, 
in 1215, no mention is made either of law or medicine. 
So far as medicine is concerned there is nothing sur- 
prising in this omission, when one reflects that the 
Church had more than once forbidden not merely 
monks, but priests also — though unsuccessfully — to 
study or to teach medicine. The first public act of 
the Paris Faculty of Medicine dates from 1270 ; it is 
a decision rendered by the masters against a student 
who had been guilty of a fraud in order to obtain the 
licentiate's degree;^ this document also makes men- 
tion of the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. 

It is thus that, towards 1275, the University of Paris 
is found constituted with its already long-established 
four Nations and its four Faculties.^ Certain ambi- 

1 Chartularium Univ. Paris., t. i, p. 503 : Agreement between the 
Chancellor of Paris and the Faculty of Decrees upon the usage of 
the seal of the said Faculty. 

2 Chartularium Univ. Paris., t. i, p. 488. 

3 The question whether the regular organization of the Faculties 
preceded or followed that of the Nations has been much disputed by 
the historians of the University of Paris. It seems to me indubit- 
able that the Nations are more ancient than the Faculties. This is 
the conclusion from all the facts I have cited. Moreover, it is more 
natural, more logical, that scholars and masters should have grouped 
themselves according to their natural affinities of race at first, 
rather than according to the similarity of their studies. 



NATIONS AND FACULTIES 111 

guities still remained, however; thus, in 1274, the 
Faculty of Arts styled itself U7iiversitas artistarum. 
But in 1277, the distinction of the Faculties was for- 
mally recognized by the assembled university ; and in 
1281, the university promised to defend each of its 
Faculties.^ 

From this time on the traditional four Faculties con- 
stantly perform autonomous and personal acts ; they 
publish ordinances ; they regulate the order of their 
lectures ; they have their private assemblies and their 
leaders ; they confer degrees on their own students. 
The three Faculties of Theology {sacra Facultas), of 
Law {consultissima Facultas), of Medicine {saluberrima 
Facultas), were denominated Superior Faculties be- 
cause, in order to be admitted to them, it was neces- 
sary to have already received the degrees of the 
Faculty of Arts {suhtilissima Facultas). 

The separation of the Faculties is a feature 
common to all the universities of the Middle Ages. 
It does not appear, however, that it was every- 
where made with the same precision as at Paris. At 
Bologna even the word '^faculty" seems to have 
been unknown : the Faculties were represented there 
by " colleges," — college of jurists, college of physi- 
cians. It is known, moreover, that in Italy the dis- 
tinct corporations of a single university themselves 
took the title of university, — university of arts, uni- 
versity of law.^ It might be said that in papal bulls 

1 '^Declarat universitas facta facultatum esse facta universi- 
tatis" (Chartularium, t. i, p. 590). 

2 The same was true at Blontpellier, which imitated Bologna 
rather than Paris. 



112 ABELARD 

the primitive sense of the word " faculty " persists 
even to the fifteenth century. In 1450, Nicholas V, 
conceding to the University of Barcelona the privi- 
leges of that of Toulouse, enumerates in what 
branches of instruction the studium generale might 
operate : in Theologia, Jure canonico et civili, Artibus 
et MecUcina: and he adds, using a formula which 
occurs in a great many pontifical acts, in qualibet alia 
licita facultate; which cannot be translated but by 
these words : " in any other permitted science." ^ 
Nearly always the sovereigns pontiffs neglect to 
notice the Faculties properly so called, and content 
themselves with drawing up the list of sciences 
taught. Thus, in a privilege relating to the Uni- 
versity of Salamanca, in 1313, Clement V enumerates 
as subjects taught: decrees, decretals, laws, medicine, 
logic, grammar, and music.^ 

Eemember, moreover, that the four classic Facul- 
ties did not exist in all the universities even when 
the primitive number had been increased in them. 
Complete universities were in the minority. On the 
other hand, certain ones, Louvain for example, had 
five Faculties, civil law being separated from canon 
law. Possibly it was the same at Salamanca, w^here, 
in any case, accessory chairs existed called extrava- 
gantes, — astrology and the languages. 

These peculiarities, however, are of small impor- 
tance. What it is interesting to verify is that in the 
majority of the great centres of instruction the 
Faculties were established by the thirteenth century ; 

1 Vicente de la Fuente, op. cit., t. i, p. 336. 

2 Vicente de la Fuente, op. cit., p. 313. 



NATIONS AND FACULTIES 113 

that at this epoch human knowledge, through a 
natural division of labor and thought, through un- 
noted progress in classical antiquity, had been divided 
into several categories, a condition indispensable to 
the development of higher studies. Assuredly, there 
is nothing definitive, nothing necessary, in the scholas- 
tic division of the four Faculties; and it is possible 
to imagine as many special Faculties in a university 
as there are separate departments comprehended 
under science itself. In our own century the Faculty 
of Arts has been dismembered in order to give birth 
to the Faculty of Sciences and the Faculty of Letters. 
And doubtless the future will see new dismemberments 
which will correspond to a more exact determination 
of the various departments of science and to the ex- 
tension of the field of thought. But the honor of 
having begun the movement to divide the branches 
of human knowledge, and thus prepare the way for 
modern science, belongs to the men of the Middle 
Ages. 



CHAPTER III 

GOVERNMENT OF UNIVERSITIES 

Republican and democratic character of the universities — The 
election a general rule in the choice of the officers — Short terms 
of office — The special privileges conceded to university officers, 
nominal rather than real — II. The Chancellor : his functions — 
His authority decreased with the development of the privileges 
of the universities — Rivalry of tire chancellor with the Rector 
of Paris — III. The Rector: his powers — Conditions of eligi- 
bility — Mode of election — Installation of the rector in the 
University of Bologna — IV. Other university officers — Procura- 
tors — Syndics — Beadles— The messengers —V. Self-government 
of universities — General council of the University of Paris — 
Separate meetings of nations and faculties — The deans. 



- The universities of the Middle Ages were veritable 
republics/ almost independent, slightly subordinated 
to the State and the Church, with the peculiarity that, 
in the first centuries of their existence their subordi- 
nation to the ecclesiastical power was the more pro- 
nounced, -while, toward the end, the ^control of the 
civil power increased. 

Moreover, they were federal republics which in- 
cluded a more or less extensive number of associations 

1 ''The system of a republican regime has always been that of 
the University of Paris " (Crevier, op. cit., t. ii, p. 295). This repub- 
lican character was still more marked in the Italian universities. 
114 



GOVERNMENT OF UNIVERSITIES 115 

and distinct companies : Faculties and Nations, inde- 
pendent themselves although, incorporated with the 
universities, having their separate deliberations and 
regulating their own affairs. 

The character of self-government which distinguished 
the universities of the Middle Ages shows itself in 
various ways : in the first place, in the principle of 
election generally employed in the choice of officers ; 
again, in the brief duration of the powers conferred 
on these officers ; and finally in the eminently honorary 
nature of these powers, the real spring of action re- 
maining either in the hands of the particular assem- 
blies of each Nation or Faculty, or in those of the 
general assembly of the university. In fact, not only 
were the dignitaries elected, under varying conditions 
and complex forms of which I do not pretend to give 
all the details here, but, in addition, these elective 
functions did not last long. There was a perpetual 
mobility, an incessant renewing of persons, in the 
administrative posts of the university. At Paris, up 
to 1266, the rector was elected for a month or six 
weeks only : it was thought that a great thing had 
been done in establishing the rule that three months 
should be the extent of his incumbency. As time 
went on it was a year, or two years, at most. Like 
all democratic societies which, jealous of their rights, 
are averse to long concessions of their sovereignty, 
and unwilling that the powers they delegate shall 
remain long in the same hands, the universities, desir- 
ous to maintain " la liberie du corps/' as Crevier says, 
looked with suspicion on long terms of office without 
disturbing themselves about the inconveniences that 



116 ABELARD 

might be occasioned by the too frequent change of 
persons. Indeed, it is incontestable that the authority 
of the officers elected by the universities was more 
honorary and decorative than real. These officers 
were hardly more than agents charged with executing 
the will of their constituents, or rather, like the rector, 
the rector magnijicus of certain universities, spectacular 
personages whose chief duty is to parade in the front 
rank at ceremonies, and who, in a word, reign rather 
than govern. 

II 

There was only one exception to this democratic 
organization of the universities : that constituted by 
the existence of the chancellor, a personage apart, the 
only one whose power did not emanate directly from 
the universities themselves, representing the Church 
and, as Crevier says, " foreign to the body." This 
supremacy, however, was very often impatiently borne, 
and the history of the disputes between the University 
of Paris and its chancellors has more than once justi- 
fied the proverb : " Our enemy is our master." 

Before the foundation of the Paris University, it 
was only the Chancellor of Notre Dame who, accord- 
ing to the common ecclesiastical law, could confer the 
" license" at Paris, the right to teach {licentia docendi). 
Prom him emanated the power which elsewhere, at 
Angers and at Orleans, for example, was exercised 
by the ecclesiastic who taught philosophy and belles- 
lettres, and was called the ecoldtre. " The keys of 
science," they said in the thirteenth century, ''have 
been placed in the hands of masters by the sovereign 



GOVERNMENT OF UNIVERSITIES 117 

pontiff, or by the Chancellor of Paris by delegation 
from the pope, in order to open the treasury of wis- 
dom." ^ It was the chancellor's duty to draw up, seal, 
and forward to their destination, the acts passed by the 
Chapter of Notre Dame. By degrees his power over 
the professors and students became very great ; he 
granted or refused arbitrarily the right to teach ; he 
could excommunicate the rebels or confine them in 
his prison.^ 

But these extraordinary powers of the chancellor 
were bound to decline as fast as the universities 
attained a definite organization. The popes them- 
selves aided the University of Paris to throw them 
off and to gain its independence. In 1219, Pope 
Honorius III decreed that the students should enjoy 
the right to teach, Ucentia docendi, if they were worthy 
of it, whether the chancellor were willing or not (etiam 
invito cancellario). At the same, he forbade the chan- 
cellor to excommunicate any member of the university 
without the authority of the Holy See.^ In 1231, in 
the famous bull Parens scientiarum . . . , Gregory IX 
again restricted the authority of the chancellor within 
the narrowest limits.* Finally, in 1252, the university- 
obtained from Innocent IV the right to have a seal of 
its own : " a right," says Thurot, " which was the sign 
and guarantee of complete independence." ^ 

The Church itself, then, labored to reduce the power 

1 Charhilarium Univ. Paris. : Introductio, p. xi. 

2 It was in 1231 only that the Chancellor of Paris ceased to have 
a prison of his own. 

3 Chartularium Univ. Paris., p. 102. 4 i})ia.^ p, 136, 

5 Thurot, op. cit., p. 12. In 1221 the university had tried to have 
a seal ; but Honorius III ordered it to he broken. 



118 ABELARD 

of its own delegate. Tliurot is in error, however, when 
he affirms that the powers granted by the popes to the 
University of Paris deprived the chancellor of all 
his authority. Pere Denifie, relying upon the texts, 
has demonstrated in an unanswerable manner, that 
throughout the whole of the thirteenth century the 
Chancellor of Notre Dame retained more power in 
the university than any one else. Jean de Garlande 
said of him in 1250 : Parisius studii directas ducit 
habenas. 

Boniface VIII, in 1301, declared that the govern- 
ment of the university belonged to the chancellor. 
It is probable that the provincial universities, less 
ambitious than the University of Paris and not so 
independent, submitted to the supremacy of their 
chancellors much longer. 

All, or nearly all, the universities had a chancellor 
appointed under slightly different conditions. Some- 
times this personage was appointed directly by the 
pope : thus at Prague the Archbishop of the city was 
invested by Pope Clement VI with these functions from 
1347. In 1219, Pope Honorius III issued the following 
decree for Bologna : " Considering that the promotion 
to degrees is granted to unworthy individuals, none 
can be granted in future without the consent of the 
Archdeacon of Bologna and a preliminary examina- 
tion." ^ From this period the popes addressed them- 
selves to the Archdeacon of Bologna as the head of 
the university. The Bishop of Turin and the 
Archbishop of Pisa were chancellors of these two 
universities. At Montpellier it was the Bishop of 
iSavigny, op. cit., t. iii, p. 1G5. 



GOVERNMENT OF UNIVERSITIES 119 

Magueionne who acted as cliancellor. In the imperial 
University of Naples, which was constructed on an 
entirely different plan and was closely dependent on 
the State, the chancellor was appointed by the em- 
peror. At Padua, the university became a party in 
the selection of the chancellor ; the professors elected 
him and the pope confined himself to confirming his 
powers. 

The chancellor, therefore, notwithstanding the in- 
creasing autonomy of the universities, continued to be 
an important personage. He was, it might be said, 
the living symbol of the ecclesiastical origin of the 
universities, and of the authority the Church still 
claimed to exercise over them. It suffices, however, 
to recall -the names of some of the chancellors of 
Paris, and notably that of Gerson (1392), to under- 
stand the importance of the r6le that devolved upon 
men who were occasionally the most illustrious of 
their age. 

In the long struggle, lasting throughout the thir- 
teenth century, to decide whether the chancellor or 
the rector was to be the supreme head of the Univer- 
sity of Paris, the rector finally triumphed; but the 
chancellor continued, none the less, to exercise powers 
and discharge functions of importance. There were 
two chancellors at Paris, moreover, of whom the most 
ancient belonged to Notre Dame, and the other to the 
Abbey of Ste. G-enevieve.^ The following extract from 

1 Mention is made of the Chancellor of Ste. Genevieve for the first 
time about 1255. There had been schools on the heights of Ste. 
Genevieve in the time of Abelard ; but it was about 1219 that mas- 
ters and scholars first emigrated in great numbers from the city 



120 ABELAKD 

Crevier fixes clearly the prerogatives they retained 
up to the eighteenth century : " The Chancellor of 
Notre Dame confers the license on those who are to 
profess theology and medicine. He formerly enjoyed 
the same authority in the Faculty of Law, which 
shook it off in 1679, but he still continues to receive 
a fee from each licentiate. He still confers the 
license on half of those who annually present them- 
selves to take the degree of Master of Arts. The 
Chancellor of Ste. Genevieve has for his share only 
the other half of the Faculty of Arts." ^ 

III 

In nearly all the universities the rector either was 
from the beginning, or gradually became, the first 
scholastic magistrate. 

The title of rector, with the prerogatives appertain- 
ing to it, does not appear definitely until 1245.^ Be- 
fore this period, the same word, which is sometimes 
used in papal bulls, seems to have been synonymous 
with "master regent." 

It is probable, however, that in the University of 
Paris the rector existed before 1245,^ and we have 

to the left bank of the Seine. It was this which rendered the 
appointment of a chancellor of Ste. Genevieve necessary. 

1 Crevier, t. vii, p. 137. 

2 Crevier claims, however, to find mention of it in the privilege 
of Philip Augustus, of 1200, in which he speaks of the capitale 
scholarium Parisiensium ; which in a contemporary French ver- 
sion is translated by le chevetaine, "the captain," of the scholars. 
But this officer evidently had not as yet the character of a true 
rector. 

3 From 1245 to 1252, says Denifle, nihil aliud quam Facidtatem 



GOVERNMENT OF UNIVERSITIES 121 

every ground for supposing that the first rector was 
elected at the time when the four Nations, of which 
he was the chief, were organized : that is, as I have 
said already, from 1215 to 1225. 

At first rector of the Nations, and, before the Fac- 
ulties were formally constituted, rector of the still 
confused mass of the entire university, it seems that, 
at the time of the organization of the separate Facul- 
ties, he remained for some time longer the chief of the 
Faculty of Arts only, the other Faculties being sub- 
ordinate at the outset merely to their respective deans. 
It was towards the close of the thirteenth century 
that the rector insensibly extended his authority over 
the Faculties of Law and Medicine, and still later, 
over that of Theology, though not without meeting 
strenuous resistance from their deans, and especially 
from the dean of the Faculty of Theology.^ 

Let me sum up in a few words the principal prerog- 
atives of the rectors. At Paris it was the rector who 
convoked both general and special assemblies by 
means of beadles and presided over them. In these 
reunions it was he who proposed the affairs to be 
deliberated on and who decided them. It appears 
that he did not take part in the discussions. Accord- 
ing to the statute of 1275, he had the additional right 
in the intervals between the assemblies of the Faculty 
of Arts, which, nevertheless, occurred once a week, 
to regulate pressing affairs with the assistance of the 

Artium Rectori incumbentem videmus. And this lasted for several 
years longer. 

1 In 1291 the dean of the Faculty of Theology protested against 
the attempt of the rector to convoke it by means of the beadle ; 
and this struggle was prolonged until 1341. 



122 ABELARD 

procurators of tlie nations. He thus constituted a 
sort of tribunal before which matters of discipline 
were, so to speak, judged in the first instance, though 
with the right of a final appeal to the assembly of the 
university. In the fourteenth century this tribunal 
met three times a week. The rector had also the dis- 
posal of a part of the dues collected from the students 
for the common expenses of the Faculty of Arts. 
Lastly he exercised a right over the sale of parch- 
ment, which was seldom authorized except at the 
annual Lendit fair.^ 

In other universities, and notably in Italy, the 
rector had still more extensive privileges. At Bo- 
logna, he exercised not only civil but criminal juris- 
diction over the students and all members of the 
•university. He condemned the delinquents either to 
fines or to exclusion from the university.^ With 
the assistance of the consiliarii, who replaced at Bo- 
logna the procurators of the nations in the French 
universities, he constituted a sort of senate which 
took cognizance of a great number of affairs. He 
presided at the examinations and at the ceremonies at 

1 The Lendit (probable etymology, Indictus, the day fixed), a 
name which has just been revived at Paris to designate the annual 
competition in physical exercises in which the pupils of the lycees 
take part, was in the Middle Ages a fair which opened yearly, 
on June 12, in the plain of St. Denis, and which was also called 
the fete of the parchment. The university went thither in proces- 
sion, headed by the rector. Arrived on the fair ground, the rector, 
before any other buyer, laid aside the quantity of parchment needed 
by the university, and received a gratuity from the merchants, 
which amounted in the sixteenth century to 2500 francs. 

2 At Padua, the rector of the "artists" took cognizance of all 
crimes save those in which condemnation entailed death or mutila- 
tion. 



GOVERNMENT OF UNIVERSITIES 123 

which, degrees were conferred. It was he who in the 
public disputes between professors as well as students, 
received the petitions and formulated the questions. 
It was he, too, who, after having examined the respec- 
tive merit of each professor, drew up every year what 
was called the roll, or rotula. And this variety of 
important prerogatives conferred upon the Italian 
rectors seems still more astonishing when it is 
remembered that in Italy the rector was usually a 
s'tudent, elected by his comrades, and that at times he 
was not more than twenty-five years old. 

The different universities present, moreover, numer- 
ous peculiarities bearing on the election and condi- 
tions of eligibility of their rectors. At Paris the 
rector was originally elected by the procurators of the 
four nations, and later by four delegates who were 
called intrants, and who were themselves elected by 
the nations. No condition with regard to age was 
fixed for the rector ; but his electors must be thirty 
years old. He must be taken from among the ruling 
masters of the Faculty of Arts. He might be a lay- 
man, but he must be a celibate. 

At Bologna, the rector elected by the students must 
be himself a student,^ be twenty-five years of age (the 
same limit was fixed at Montpellier ; at Padua they 
contented themselves with twenty-two years), and 
not a member of any religious order. He was placed 
each year. As a rule he was chosen from among the 
wealthier students. The statutes of the University 

1 At Padua, where there were several rectors, the rector of the 
"artists" must be a physician. At Bologna, though by an excep- 
tion, rectors might be chosen from among the professors. 



124 ABELARD 

of Louvaiu required that the rector should be satis 
dives et locuples; it was desired that he should be 
able to do honor to functions which admitted of con- 
siderable display. At Dole the rector could be neither 
a monk, a member of a religious order, a native of 
Dole, a husband, nor a doctor.^ Celibacy was ordi- 
narily required. At Caen, for example, whenever a 
talented young professor obtained a chair of law or 
medicine, haste was made to elevate him to the rector- 
ship lest, by a speedy marriage, he might render 
himself incapable of an honor of which he seemed 
worthy.^ At Naples the position of rector was a per- 
manent one and was filled by the civil authorities ; 
but in all the other universities, as I have said, the 
function was elective. At Oxford, in the earliest 
times, the rector, who was afterwards replaced by the 
chancellor as head of the university, was elected by 
the graduates and his election confirmed by the Bishop 
of Lincoln.'^ At Salamanca the professors had at 
their head a rector elected by the cathedraticos, or 
regents of theology of the first rank. He was always 

1 Doctor, that is to say, professor ; it was held that the rectorial 
functions could not be associated with the duties of instruction. In 
general, the rectors did not teach, except, as it appears, in some of 
the Italian universities. 

2 J. Cauvet, L'ancienne Universite de Caen, 1873. The married 
rector was an exception. One example is cited at Padua in 1508. 

3 " At Cambridge there was no rector, but a chancellor, who pos- 
sessed many of the powers of the Parisian and Bonouian rectors. 
Though elected by the two houses of regents and non-regents, he 
had powers independent of the regents. His powers were ecclesi- 
astical, both in their nature and origin. He was constituted, says 
Dean Peacock, a distinct estate in the academical commonwealth." 
— Laurie, op. cit., p. 243. 



GOVERNMENT OF UNIVERSITIES 125 

chosen from some great family. He had very great 
privileges, and was always seated under a canopy at 
the public assemblies. 

It was usual to have but one rector, except in the 
Italian universities, where there were several rectors 
at a time. At Bologna, at Padua, and at Verceil there 
were at first four rectors, one for the Citramontanes, 
three for the Ultramontanes. Later on, there were 
but two; one for the University of Law, and the 
other for the University of Arts. 

The true reason which prevented the rectors of the 
Middle Ages from playing a really important part in 
the universities, was the temporary character of their 
functions. How could they acquire great moral au- 
thority in a few months ? The mediocrity of their 
role is sufficiently proved by little facts like these : In 
1373 and in 1374, two rectors of Paris inform us, one 
that he has had the rector's book rebound in red 
leather and provided with new clasps ; the other, that 
he has had a silver chain affixed to the rectorial seal. 
University officers who relate things so insignificant 
can have had very few important ones to do. 

It was above all by the display, the external show 
of his position, that the rector was a notable person. 
He walked in the first rank, not m^erely in the univer- 
sity ceremonies, but on public occasions. At Bologna 
he took precedence over the archdeacon (the chancel- 
lor), the bishops and the archbishops, him of Bologna 
alone excepted. The rector of Paris took precedence 
even of the archbishop ; more than once he sat in the 
Eoyal Councils with the prelates, the princes and the 
nobles. In an age when outward show impressed the 



126 ABELARD 

popular imagination still more forcibly than in our 
own day, the rector was distinguished by the splen- 
dor of his costume, and the long procession which 
thronged after him wherever he went. And this 
prestige of the rectorial dignity lasted to the very 
end. In the eighteenth century, during the long 
quarrel that they entered into for the sake of main- 
taining their right of precedence against the claims 
of the bishop, the rectors of Poitiers said: "The 
rectors of universities are vested in purple and ermine 
like the kings, and, in consequence, they retain the 
function of sovereignty and of royal majesty." And 
they complacently recall how Ferdinand, King of 
Spain, caused the Eector of the University of Alcala 
to be seated between Cardinal Ximenes and himself. 

The election of the rector, also, was surrounded 
everywhere by a great number of precautions and 
formalities. The heads of the universities were 
chosen with very nearly the same forms as were the 
popes; the duration of the conclave which was to 
elect them was even determined by that of the flame 
of a candle of fixed weight. The installation of the 
new rector gave rise to one of the most brilliant and 
imposing ceremonies of the Middle Ages. Consider, 
for instance, how the thing was done in a little uni- 
versity, that of Dole : " Convoked the previous day, 
by its general beadle and by placards posted on the 
doors of the churches, the university assembles in 
the Hall of Laws, or some other suitable place, under 
the presidency of the acting rector, who opens the 
session by a discourse on the importance of the choice 
to be made, and the necessity of electing an honorable 



GOVERNMENT OF UNIVERSITIES 127 

candidate whose merit shall be obvious to all. After- 
wards he administers the oath to the electors on the 
Gospels, designates those who are to count the votes, 
and requests the former to repair, without going out, 
to a special hall which is called the conclave. From 
the moment when they cross its threshold they are 
prohibited from leaving it until after having made an 
election, under penalty of being excluded from the 
university for a month. If there is a tie, the acting 
rector takes part in the voting and ends the deadlock. 
But he alone can enter the chamber where the deliber- 
ations are going on, and which cannot, in any case, 
last more than an hour. During this time the general 
assembly remains in session, anxiously awaiting the 
announcement of the person elected, and whose choice 
they are to ratify. Introduced with pomp into the 
assembly, he swears to maintain the honor, the dis- 
cipline, the peace, and the privileges of the body, to 
cause the statutes to be observed, and to make no 
decision without the advice of the council. ^^ ^ 

At Bologna the assumption of the rectorial power 
was accompanied with the greatest pomp. The cathe- 
dral was the place ordinarily chosen for the ceremony. 
Drums and trumpets opened the march ; then followed 
the students bearing gilded fasces, in memory of the 
Roman magistrates ; then the keepers of the seal and 
the statutes of the university, who carried the gown 
of the rector ; a beadle followed with a silver sceptre. 
The rector advanced in the midst of the procession, 
vested in a red robe with golden ornaments, sur- 

1 Les Universites de la Franche ComU, par H. Beaune et d' Arbau- 
mont, p. xlviii. 



128 ABELARD 

rounded by all the dignitaries of the university, -and 
followed by all the students. All the magistrates of 
the city and the dignitaries of the clergy were assem- 
bled in the church. There the discourses were deliv- 
ered ; the rector was formally invested with his gown ; 
and the crowd afterwards accompanied the newly 
elected to his dwelling, through streets adorned and 
decked in holiday attire. The remainder of the day 
was devoted to games and public rejoicings.^ 

The services of the rector were not rendered gratui- 
tously, but neither were they richly rewarded. At 
Paris the rector had what was called the right of the 
cJiappe,^ a payment made by the new Masters of Arts,^ 
besides the tax on the parchment levied at the Lendit 
fair, and certain other revenues. At Padua the salary 
of the rector was at first fifty ducats, afterwards one 
hundred; at Pisa, in 1473, forty florins, afterwards 
sixty or one hundred. But what proves that the rector 
was not highly paid by the university — although he 
carried a large violet purse at his belt, " in which," 
says Duboulay,'* " the common people believed that 
there were always one hundred gold crowns, I know 
not on what foundation " — is that candidates for recto- 
rial functions were usually sought for among those 
who possessed private fortunes ; still another proof 
is found in the gratuities solicited occasionally by the 
rectors and granted by the Nations. In 1347, the 

1 Coppi, op. cit., p. 147. 

2 The chappe, that is, the habit, the rectorial costume. 

3 Crevier, t. iii, p. 391, 

4 Duboulay, Eemarques sur la dignite, puissance, authority et 
jtirisdictioii du Reeteur de VUniversite de Paris. Paris, 1668, 
p. 24. 



GOVERNMENT OF UNIVERSITIES 129 

rector was allowed four livres ; in 1410, thirty gold 
crowns, "to assist him, no doubt/' says Crevier, "in 
defraying the cost of his dignity." ^ The smallness of 
these sums would cause a smile if one did not take 
into consideration the value of money in an age when 
King Charles V thought he had paid Erasmus gener- 
ously for his translation of the Ethics of Aristotle, by 
giving him one hundred francs. 

In spite of its short duration and its meagre re- 
wards, the office of rector was sought for none the 
less, and much intriguing was done to obtain it. 
This was because it assured, in the first place, several 
months of supremacy and universal respect to him 
who exercised it; whenever a member of the univer- 
sity addressed the rector, in Paris at all events, he 
said to him, Vestra ampUtudo. ... It was also be- 
cause, after having attained the rectorship, there 
remained to the rectors throughout their lives some- 
thing of that prestige which attached in Eome to men 
of consular rank ; the rector of Paris was inscribed 
first in the list which the university annually sub- 
mitted to the pope for the conferring of benefices. 

IV 

I shall not dwell upon the other university digni- 
taries, and shall limit myself to little more than 
enumerating them. The Nations had their chiefs 
everywhere, the procurators at Paris, the counsellors 
(consigliarii) at Bologna.^ The procurators of Cam- 

1 Crevier, t. ii, p. 372. 

2 At Bologna there were as many counsellors as Nations, namely, 



I. JO ABELARI) 

bridge were called vice-r(H;tors. The procurator kept 
a register of Lis adiriiiiistratioii ; there was a liber pro- 
cnratfrn's as there was a liber rector is. 

Here are a few details con(;erning the role of the 
proeunitoi-s of the iiiedicjal students at Moiitpellier in 
the sixteenth century. Tliis dignitary was elected an- 
nua,! ly \)y iiis comrades, and might be taken indiffer- 
(uitly from the ordinary studcuits or the bachelors. 
"As the common welfare," said the statutes of 1534, 
"depends upon those who administer the public func- 
tions, special care should be taken to select a faithful 
and zealous })rocurator, who will show himself jealous 
for the honor and the interests of the university; any 
one who leads a dishonest life, who is addicted to gam- 
ing or (lebau(di(!ry, is unworthy of this office and should 
be excluded from it." The procurator of Montpellier 
had the right to renu)nstrate with professors who 
were not pun(;tual in giving their lectures : " At the 
request of the students in medicine, I, the procurator, 
accompanied by counsellors ^ and assisted by a notary 
and witnesses, have presented myself to the doctors 
who through unwillingness do not deliver their lec- 
tures, and have requested them to fulfil their duties." 
The badge of office of the procurator at Montpellier 
was a baton of honor, which he carried in the public 
ceremonies.^ At Paris the procurators of tlie Nations 
wore red robes. 

The procurator, therefore, was the agent, the charg4 

v\p,hUHm lor tlui nilrainonlancs and seventeen for the Citramou- 
lancs. 

' TIk^ procnraior of Monlix^llier was assisted by (counsellors. 

-La, Valahrej^ne, Aa Vie UiUvcrsitaire a MontpclUi' r, lSi)0, i).i) 
et seq. 



GOVERNMENT OF UNIVERSITIES 131 

cVaffaires, as one might say, of the students. Some- 
times he represented a Nation, sometimes a Faculty, 
according to the customs of different universities. 
At Paris the procurator of the Nation of France had 
special privileges ; in case of a vacancy in the rector- 
ate, he was considered the head of the Faculty of 
Arts. At first the powers of the office did not regu- 
larly last longer than a month, but they were after- 
wards extended to a year. 

Another university magistrate who did not exist 
everywhere, but whom we find at Paris and at Bo- 
logna, was the syndic, who was also called the " fiscal 
procurator." At Paris, the syndic, according to Du- 
boulay and Crevier, must have been instituted by 
1203.-^ But he seems to have played a sufficiently 
unimportant part. At Bologna, and at Padua and 
Pisa as well, the syndic, who sometimes took the title 
of vice-rector, was elected every year by the students. 
He replaced the absent rector. Normally, he repre- 
sented the university before the tribunals.^ 

Other offices were rendered necessary by the admin- 
istration of the university revenues, — at Louvain the 
receptores, simple stewards or cashiers 5 in Italy, the 
treasurer, who was sometimes chosen from among 
the professors and again from the students. 

In like manner the drawing up of acts and registers 
was confided in Paris to a registrar (greffier), and in 
Italy to a notary, to archivists, etc. 

The universities had subaltern agents also, the 

1 Crevier, t. i, p. 284. 

2 Among the dignitaries of the university must also be reckoned 
the conservator of royal privileges (at Paris the provost) and the 
conservator of apostolic privileges (usually a bishop). 



132 ABELARD 

beadles, whose business it was to announce the days 
and hours of lectures, to publish the decisions of the 
university councils, to transmit the summons of the 
rector, to assist the professors during their courses, and 
to maintain good order in the schools ; and who, more- 
over, with their silver maces, preceded the rector in 
the public ceremonies. At Paris there were fourteen 
beadles, two for each Nation and Faculty. In certain 
universities the beadles seem to have been something 
more than mere agents for material services. In 
Italy, according to Coppi, one of their duties was to 
exercise "a secret surveillance over the private con- 
duct of the professors." ^ 

The university personnel was numerous, as may be 
seen. It comprehended also, among those entitled to 
the privileges of the university, all whose industry was 
necessary to the carrying on of the studies : book- 
sellers, paper makers, bookbinders, parchment makers, 
illuminators, copyists, etc. In Italy the stationarii 
were required to furnish the students with all the 
books and manuscripts they needed. The trade in 
books was a university monopoly. The trade of the 
copyists, who put the lectures of the professors into 
circulation among the students, was very lucrative and 
gave employment to many persons. The booksellers 
sometimes abused the favorable conditions created for 
them by the scarcity of books, and in 1275 the Uni- 
versity of Paris intervened to tax at four deniers the 
book, their right of brokerage.^ 

Finally, a word must be said concerning the messen- 

1 Coppi, op. cit., p. 161. 

2 " When printing came to transform and renew the industry of 
the book trade, it remained none the less under the protection of the 



GOVERNMENT OF UNIVERSITIES 133 

gers, who, at tlie beginning, formed a part of the 
membership (suppdts) of the university. There is 
mention of the nuyitii as early as the edict of Fred- 
erick Barbarossa, in 1158.^ From the earliest times 
the University of Paris appointed messengers, whose 
duty it was to carry the letters of the students to the 
provinces or to foreign parts, and to bring back the 
answers and the money, clothing, and other things 
which parents wished to send to their children. 
"But the insecurity of the roads at the time often 
caused interruptions in the journeys of the messengers. 
The students were more than once obliged to have 
recourse to the citizens of Paris in order to procure 
what they needed. The citizens profited by the oc- 
casion to claim the privileges of messengers. The 
university agreed to take them under its protection, 
and thereupon a distinction arose between the great 
and the petty messengers of the university.^ The 
university messengers did not confine their labors to 
the service of the masters and students, moreover. 
They gradually extended it to the transportation of 
letters and packages for private persons ; and this was 
the origin of the establishment of stage coaches, which 
formed one of the most important sources of the 
university revenues.^ 

university; and up to the French Revolution the lihr aires jures of 
the university received their investiture from the rector, and the 
Faculty of Theology had the right of censorship over all writings 
which might touch upon the faith." — Vallet de YixWiWe, Histoire 
de V Instruction xiuhlique, p. 128. 

1 Frederick accorded the privileges granted by this charter, ** tarn 
ipsis scholaribus quam eorum nunciis." 

2 Caillet, de V Administration en France sous Richelieu, 1857, p. 
443. 

3 At the outset the taxes j)aid by the petty messengers, that is, 



134 ABELARD 



The real power, in the universities of the Middle 
Ages, as I have said, was not in the hands of the 
dignitaries I have just enumerated. It remained 
either in the general assembly (congregatio generalis) 
of the university or in the individual assemblies of 
each Faculty and Nation. The universities were es- 
sentially federated republics, the government of which 
pertained either to the whole body of the masters, as 
in the University of Paris, which was a university of 
professors, or to the whole body of the students, as in 
the democratic University of Bologna, which was a 
university of students. The rector and the procura- 
tors were mere delegates, charged with the execution 
of the wishes of the corporation. " They had no in- 
clination," says Crevier, "to transfer the rights of the 
body to its heads." 

From the close of the thirteenth century, in 1289,^ 
there sat in the general council of the University of 
Paris, the rector, who presided, the procurators of the 
Nations, and the deans of the Faculties.^ 

Only the Superior Faculties had each its dean, 
the rector being the special head of the Faculty of 

by the letter carriers and couriers, accrued either to the procurator 
of the Nations, the rector, or to the deans of the Faculties. In the 
seventeenth century the stage coach service became a public one ; 
but it was understood that a part of the proceeds of this service 
would remain at the disposition of the university, which used them 
to pay a salary to the professors of tlie colleges of the Faculty of 
Arts. This prepared the way for the reform of 1719, the year when 
gratuitous instruction was established. 

1 Crevier, t. ii, p. 118. 

2 At Bologna the deans were called " the priors." 



GOVERNMENT OF UNIVERSITIES 135 

Arts. In 1267 or 1268 there occurs for the first time 
in the acts of the University of Paris, mention of 
the deans of the Faculty of Decrees and the Faculty 
of Medicine ; in 1290, of the dean of Theology, who 
seems, in the earliest times, to have been the same 
person as the Chancellor of Notre Dame. In the 
eighteenth century, when Crevier drew up the list of 
the dignitaries of the University of Paris, the deans 
were regulated thus : the dean of the Faculty of The- 
ology was the eldest of its secular professors ; the 
Faculty of Law chose its dean yearly from its profes- 
sors, following the order of seniority; the Faculty 
of Medicine alone, since 1338, had had an elected dean 
whose official term lasted two years. 

The deans held a very important office. They were 
the real administrators of their respective Faculties. 
They presided in the assemblies of their company, 
and were members of the council of the University. 

At Paris, the professors alone composed the assem- 
blies of the Faculties. It was necessary to be a 
Master of Arts to be a member of the Faculty of 
Arts ; and a professor, to take part in the delibera- 
tions of the other Faculties. "All powers," says 
Thurot, ^^were concentrated in the assemblies of the 
companies ; they passed the regulations, examined 
particular requests, and nominated directly to all the 
offices. . . . Ordinarily their chiefs could decide noth- 
ing without having taken the orders of the company." ^ 
It was, therefore, the special councils of each Superior 
Faculty, and of the four Nations assembled in the 
Faculty of Arts, which regulated all that concerned 
1 Thurot, op. cit., p. 20. 



136 ABELARD 

discipline, the collection and employment of revenues, 
the character of the courses and discussions. In the 
Superior Faculties votes were cast by persons ; in 
the Faculty of Arts, by Nations. 

One divines the part reserved to the general assem- 
bly of the university, a sort of supreme and regulating 
council, which for the most part contented itself with 
confirming the decisions of the companies when they 
were submitted to it. The rector, as president, pro- 
posed the subject of discussion ; then each of the 
companies deliberated separately; after which the 
procurators and the deans reported to the council, 
which deliberated on them, the opinions of the Na- 
tions and the Faculties ; and the rector summed up. 
Here are some examples of the decisions arrived at 
by the Assembly of the University : in 1333, abolition 
of the provinces of the Nation of England; in 1356, 
determination of the limits of the Nation of England 
and the Nation of Picardy ; in 1389, obligation imposed 
on bachelors in theology to sojourn in Paris until 
their licentiate. In all of these matters the univer- 
sity did hardly more than intervene to give additional 
weight to the separate resolutions of each company. 
A certain number of questions, however, were in the 
exclusive jurisdiction of the great council of the Uni- 
versity : all those which related to the common privi- 
leges of the University, and to the violation or abuse 
of these privileges ; those, also, which concerned the 
industries placed under its protection, such as book 
and parchment making. 

In the other universities we shall find, with certain 
variations, the same system of self-government. At 



GOVERNMENT OF UNIVERSITIES 137 

Prague there was at first a congregatio universitatis, 
in which masters and students had equal votes. This 
was the primary assembly. Above this sat a special 
university council (concilium universitatis) composed 
of eight members, two from each Nation. The su- 
preme council, under the authority of the rector, 
became the directing power of the University of 
Prague. At Cambridge, the internal regulation of 
the education and of the degree system rested practi- 
cally with the voting masters, in spite of the consid- 
erable prerogatives conferred on the Chancellor. 

It is permissible to say, then, that in the heart of the 
Middle Ages, when all the nations, from the political 
point of view, knew as yet nothing but the regime of 
a more or less absolute monarchy, the universities had 
already made trial of liberty in their internal life : they 
were republics of letters and of scientific men in a world 
still bowed down under the domination of emperors 
and kings. Undoubtedly they depended on the pontifi- 
cal authority for the general regulation of discipline 
and the programme of studies. It was the papal legates 
who presided at all the reforms of the University of 
Paris, in 1366 and 1452, before the civil authority had 
laid hands upon it, under Henry IV, in 1600. But in 
the election of their ofiicers, in the details of their 
organization, in the daily management of their affairs 
and their interests, the universities had nevertheless 
a vast field of independent action before them. They 
were the first bodies, since ancient times, to exercise 
self-government, and thus to give an example to the 
statesmen of the future. I do not deny that the 
liberty they enjoyed had its excesses, its abuses, and 



138 ABELARD 

also its weaknesses,^ that their regime was sometimes 
anarchic ; in spite of all, they lived, they prospered. 
They applied successfully a system of government 
which modern peoples are more and more tending to 
extend, not simply to studies and scholastic matters, 
but to the whole body of their affairs and interests of 
every kind. Before the free English monarchy, the 
University of Paris had been, under a nominal chief, 
the rector, an example of representative and parlia- 
mentary government. Before the modern republics 
of the old world and the new, the University of 
Bologna had made trial of democratic government. 

1 It is a strange thing that the assemblies of Paris, after having 
been only too tumultuous and disturbed by shouts and quarrelling, 
became almost deserted. In 1417 it was asserted that while not 
more than five or six were present in the cloister of the Mathurius 
(the place of the gatherings of the Faculty of Arts), not fewer 
than thirty scholars were counted at the same moment in a wine 
shop, in tdbernis. 



J 



141 



CHAPTER IV 

SYSTEM OF GRADUATION 

I. Examinations and grades wholly unknown to antiquity — Gradu- 
ation is an invention of the Mediaeval Universities — Analogy 
with the apprenticeship and mastership of the commercial 
guilds — Origin of university degrees — Time of their institu- 
tion — The licentia docendi — The right of conferring degrees 
assumed by the ecclesiastical power — II. The three university 
degrees: bachelorship, licentiateship, mastershi^D ordoctorship — 
The bachelor — Various meanings of this word — The " deter- 
minance"; first trial in the Faculty of Arts — The bachelor of 
arts, of theology, of medicine, of law — The bachelorship an 
apprenticeship for the license — III, The licentiateship — Masters 
or doctors — Various procedures of the faculties of arts, of 
theology, etc. — The conferring of the mastership a ceremony 
rather than an examination — Forms of promotion in Bologna, in 
Montpellier — Considerable expense attending the promotions — 
Defects and abuses. 



If it be true that there is good ground of complaint 
at present against the multiplicity of examinations ; 
if the objections made by those who protest against 
the unreasonableness of competitions and the infinite 
variety of diplomas are well founded, it is the Middle 
Ages which must be held responsible, for they were 
the first culprits ; it is the universities of the Middle 
Ages which must be blamed, for they were the in- 
ventors of examinations and degrees. In Greek and 

139 



140 ABELARD 

Roman antiquity there is no trace of any test of 
capacity, nor even of any conditions whatsoever, be- 
ing imposed on any one who desired to teach. Neither 
the sophists nor the philosophers of the school of 
Socrates Avere graduated. Theirs was the age of abso- 
lute liberty of instruction. It is true that Quintilian, 
the celebrated professor of rhetoric, was pensioned at 
Rome by Vespasian,^ but he had no greater need than 
his contemporaries of a degree of any sort to justify 
him in keeping school. 

It is in an edict of the Emperor Yalentinian, in 329, 
that a distinction, though still a vague one, is drawn 
for the first time between the sophists of that age, 
wandering and worthless professors, who, it was said, 
having no right to teach, ought to be dismissed and 
requested to vacate the premises, and the masters 
who, on the contrary, being held in esteem by com- 
petent men, ought to be distinguished from their 
rivals and authorized to teach.^ It is none the less 
true that it was the Middle Ages that really inaugu- 
rated a system of graduation, conferring the right to 
teach after a certain term of studies and appropriate 
examinations. 

Mr. Laurie has made the clever remark that, in 
instituting their degrees, the universities were merely 
imitating customs already established in the indus- 
trial and commercial corporations.^ "The members 
of a guild corporation were divided into three distinct 
classes — apprentices, assistants or companions, and 

1 " . . . ejisco solarium accepit." See my Histoire des doctrines 
de r^ducation, t. i, p. 33. 

2 ". . . exceptis his qui a prohatissimis approhati ab hac debu- 
erunt colluvione secerni." ^ Laurie, op. cit., p. 215. 



SYSTEM OF GRADUATION 141 

masters. These assistants were in France frequently 
called gargons or compagnons du devoir. The assist- 
ants were not admitted to the grade of ^ master ' until 
they had performed some special task a-ssigned to 
them. ... It was only if this chef-d^oeuvre was 
found satisfactory that they were installed as masters 
— a ceremony which was generally followed by a 
banquet. The gargon who obtained his mastership 
obtained thereby for the first time freedom to exer- 
cise his trade, or craft, and all the rights of a member 
of the guild." 

Is not this a very exact image of what took place 
in the university corporations when it was understood 
that in order to become a master of arts, and have the 
right to follow the profession of teaching, one must 
have spent a certain number of years on the benches 
of a school and have passed a successful examination 
before competent judges ? 

It is manifest that the universities borrowed from 
the industrial corporations their "companionships," 
their " masterships," and even their banquets ; a great 
repast being the ordinary sequel of the reception of 
the baccalaureate or doctorate.^ 

The comparison will seem even more just when one 
reflects that the grades were not what the bacca- 
laureate, for example, is in France at present, — 
a mere evidence of successful studies, a passport 
granted to those who, after passing regularly through 

1 "The trial for the mastership, by public disputation against all 
comers in presence of the other masters, was analogous to the chef- 
d'oeiwre that the aspirant to the mastership of a craft had to sub- 
mit to the judgment of the jurors of his craft." Laurie, op. cit., 
p. 218. 



142 ABELARD 

the classes of a college, seek to make some sort of 
place for themselves in society. The grades, the 
"degrees," were then professional titles, something 
like the different orders which must be received by 
an ecclesiastic before arriving at the priesthood. 
They conferred the right to exercise an exclusive 
profession ; like the licentia docendi, granted very 
early at Paris, without examination, moreover, and 
without much care, by the Chancellor of Notre Dame ; 
or like the licentia medendi, accorded to the physicians 
of Salerno from the twelfth century. 

It is impossible to fix precisely the period at which 
the system of degrees began to be organized. Things 
were done slowly. At the outset, and until towards 
the end of the twelfth century, there existed nothing 
resembling a real conferring of degrees in the ris- 
ing universities. In order to teach, it was sufficient 
to have a respondent, a master authorized by age and 
knowledge. Abelard was not reproached for teaching 
without a degree, but for teaching without a master, 
si7ie magistro. So, too, at Bologna, Irnerius does not 
seem to have been the pupil of any one, or to derive 
his eminent and indisputable learning from any one 
except himself. This was the time when a pope, 
Alexander III, opposed the pretensions of the bishops 
who wished to have the right of conferring the license 
to teach reserved exclusively to them or their dele- 
gates, and seemed to believe that the teaching faculty 
was a gift of God. At any rate, he formally forbade 
that any sum of money should be required from the 
candidates as the price of the right to teach, which 
was granted them, and he required that " any capable 



SYSTEM OF GRADUATION 143 

and instructed man " {idoneus et litteratus) should be 
authorized to keep school.^ 

The "license to teach/' nevertheless, became by 
slow degrees, as masters and pupils multiplied, a pre- 
liminary condition of teaching, a sort of diploma 
more and more requisite, and of which the bishops or 
their representatives, chancellors or ecoldtres,^ were 
the dispensers. Up to the fourteenth century there 
was hardly any other clearly defined university title : 
the license to teach law or medicine at Bologna or 
Salerno, where law and medicine were still the only 
studies in vogue ; the license to teach the arts and 
theology at Paris, where the arts and theology were 
still in ascendency. 

Originally, the license was conferred without an 
examination on whomever was held to possess the 
necessary aptitude. By degrees greater severity was 
introduced, principally in what concerned theology, 
the popes being specially interested in the teaching of 
it. In his bnll of 1231, Gregory IX recommended 
the Chancellor of Paris to make a serious investi- 
gation of the capacity and the morals of aspirants 
for professorships : " Future chancellors," said he, 
" still swear not to receive as professors of theology 
and canon law any but worthy men, able to do honor 
to their precepts, and they shall reject all who are 
unworthy, without respect either to persons or to 
nations. Before conferring the license, the chancellor 

1 Chartularium Univ. Paris., t. i, p. 5. So, also, in the Lateran 
Council of 1179, the same pope said: Nullus quemquam, qui sit 
idoneus, petita Ucentia interdieat {Ibid., p. 10) . 

2 Ecclesiastical professors who taught philosophy and belles- 
lettres in each cathedral school. 



144 ABELARD 

shall allow three months to elapse, dating from the 
day when the license was asked for, and during these 
three months he shall make inquiries of the professors 
of theology and other serious and instructed persons, 
in order to become acquainted with the life and man- 
ners, the knowledge, capacity, love of study, per- 
fectibility, and other qualities needful in those who 
aspire to teach ; and, these inquiries finished, he 
shall grant or refuse the license according to his 
conscience." ^ 

Gradual progress was thus being made toward a 
regulation, toward a system of examinations. Condi- 
tions were imposed already. Acting professors were 
consulted as to the merits of their pupils. Later on, 
these professors will examine the candidates, and sub- 
ject their knowledge and their abilities to established 
tests. It was required that the inquiry intrusted to 
the chancellor should extend over three months. 
Later, it will be from the candidates themselves that 
a scholastic probation, and evidence of a certain num- 
ber of years devoted to study, will be required. 

At the beginning, then, the " license to teach " was 
neither a degree, nor an examination. In any case it 
was the sole degree.^ True, bachelors ^ and doctors, 
that is, as it seems, students and professors, were 
already much spoken of ; but there was neither a 
bachelorship nor a doctorship. " Doctor " or " mas- 
ter " meant then any one who taught. " Originally,'^ 

1 Chartularium Univ. Paris., t. i, p. 237. 

2 "A degree, originally, was a license to teach." Maiden, On 
the Origin of Uniiiersities, London, 1849, p. 112. 

3 In the bull of Gregory IX (1231), there is already question of 
bachelors: ". . . qui et qua horaet quid legere debeant bachellarii." 



SYSTEM OF GRADUATION 145 

says Crevier, "the terms doctor and professor were 
synonymous.^' ^ There were doctores juris^ at Bo- 
logna from the twelfth century, and from the thir- 
teenth doctores medicince, philosophice, etc., but all 
these before the examinations which afterwards gave 
a right to these titles had been instituted. In other 
words, "doctor" and "master" were expressions em- 
ployed at first in a general sense before taking a defi- 
nite signification in order to designate the degrees, 
the particular grades of the university hierarchy.^ 
It was altogether natural, in fact, that he who had 
obtained the license to teach (licentia docendi) should 
be called doctor. So, too, there were " bachelors," that 
is, apprentices, beginners, although there was as yet 
no thought of establishing an examination correspond- 
ing to the first grade of studies, and although 'there 
was nothing that resembled what, in the fourteenth 
century, was called the determinance, or the bachelor- 
ship. 

Another peculiarity of these somewhat obscure and 
confused beginnings of the graduation system is that 
the professors, who were not as yet formed into a 
regular corporation, a Faculty, exerted a merely sec- 
ondary influence, and played but a minor part in the 
granting of licenses. The time had not yet come 

1 Crevier, t. v, p. 149. 

2 Irnerius, however, is styled magister and doyninus, but not 
doctor. 

3 "In the early days of the school of Bologna," says Savigny, 
"the expressions, doctor, magister, and dominus had the significa- 
tion of professor. These titles could not designate an office or a 
degree, since at that time nothing of the sort existed." 



146 ABELARD 

when, in this matter, the principle would prevail that 
responsibility ought to be allied to competence ; and 
that academic degrees could not legitimately be con- 
ferred except by academic bodies. Originally it is 
the Church, the teaching Church, which believes that 
it alone has the power and the right to appoint pro- 
fessors. And when, later on, assailed by the incessant 
progress of university autonomy, the Church will be 
obliged to concede this right, at least in so far as it is 
real and positive, to the members of the university, 
the chancellor retaining a merely nominal authority, 
and having nothing to do except to countersign the 
diplomas granted by the Faculties — it will not abdi- 
cate all claims upon it. In 1522, and in 1547, we 
shall see the popes giving to their legates, by formal 
bulls, the right to create bachelors, licentiates, and 
doctors, with all the privileges attached to these 
titles.^ Likewise, in 1550, we shall find Julius III 
granting to the Society of Jesus the right to confer de- 
grees upon all the pupils in its colleges. But in these 
latter cases, the Church will at least content itself with 
claiming for its delegates, or for a favorite and espe- 
cially loved congregation, a participation in a privilege 
which it no longer dares to contest with the enfran- 
chised and all-powerful universities. Originally, on 
the contrary, it was not merely a part but the totality 
of the academic investitures which the Church claimed 
the right to exercise, and which, in fact, it did exer- 

iCrevier, t, v, pp. 204, 475. The University of Paris protested 
energetically moreover against these bulls, which protest, it appears, 
remained ineffectual. 



SYSTEM OF GRADUATION 147 

cise. ^^ In the thirteenth century," says M. Germain, 
" at Montpellier, as at Paris and Bologna and every- 
where else, degrees were conferred under the auspices 
of the ecclesiastical authority." ^ 

II 

When the different Faculties had been constituted 
in the midst of the university, each with its regular 
course of studies and its special corps of professors, 
the system of degrees followed naturally from the 
necessity of controlling the work of the pupils, of clos- 
ing by examinations and by private or public acts, and 
of celebrating by ceremonies, the successive periods of 
study. Already, in preceding centuries, the old dis- 
tinction of trivium and of quadrivium had displayed a 
tendency to mark out two stages in the study of the 
liberal arts. This tendency became general. Thence- 
forward there were several degrees in each Faculty, 
and nearly the same degrees, with the same names, 
in all the Faculties. The professors became the 
judges of their pupils, and recommended to the chan- 
cellor, who no longer had anything to do except to 
record their decisions, the candidates whom they 
deemed worthy to be graduated. 

1 Germain, Etude historique sur I'ecole de droit de Montpellier, 
1877, p. 10. M. Germain cites the following fact in corroboration : 
"In 1268, the King of Aragon, James I, conceived the notion of 
appointing a professor of civil law, in his capacity as seigneur of 
Montpellier, and without the concurrence of the Bishop of Mague- 
lonne. The latter protested, and the pope, Clement IV, gave judg- 
ment in his favor, by citing a canon of Eugenius IV, who had 
invested the bishops with the privilege of appointing the professor^ 
to their chairs." 



148 ABELARD 

At Paris — and the usages established at Paris, 
except ill the case of certain peculiarities which I 
shall point out in the other universities, became during 
the course of the fourteenth century the general rule 
— three degrees were distinguished, the bachelorship, 
the licentiateship, the mastership or doctorship.^ To 
be exact, the mastership did not constitute a special 
degree, — the mastership was merely a title, the con- 
sequence of the license and its formal consecration. 
"The assumption of the title of master by the licen- 
tiate," says Laurie justly, "was a merely ceremonial 
introduction into the magistral body." 

Let us begin by examining the first of these three 
academic degrees, the baccalaureate, to discover its 
origin : neither the word nor the thing is as clear as 
it might be. 

Littre sets forth as follows the various significations 
of the word bachelor : " In its primitive sense, the 
baccalarius was a countryman who managed a certain 
number of ^manses,' that is, of estates. The name 
was also given to a young warrior who was not yet 
a knight. Then there were bachelors of the Church 
who were ecclesiastics of an inferior degree. In the 
trade corporations there were bachelors called juniores 
who managed the minor affairs of the corporation. 
Finally, and from the same current of thought, sprang 
the bachelors of the Faculties." ^ 

1 " The grades, steps, or degrees were nominally four, actually 
three, viz., bachelor, licentiate or master, finally doctor." (Laurie, 
op. cit., p. 228.) It wov\ld be more exact to say : bachelor, licentiate, 
j&nally master or doctor. 

2 Littre, Dictionnaire de la langue franraise, on the word Bache- 
lier. 



SYSTEM OF GRADUATION 149 

" Bachelor," then, was a very general term, whose 
different uses were justified by the fact that it was 
always applied to an inferior, a beginner, an apprentice. 
It was thus that the word, in growing still more com- 
mon, became the synonym for a young man who was 
serving his apprenticeship in life.-^ So, too, a "bach- 
elette " was a young girl. 

Introduced into scholastic language, the word 
" bachelor " was at first employed only to designate 
the youngest students, those aspiring to the licentiate. 
Even when a real examination, the determmance, had 
been instituted as the preliminary test imposed on 
students of the Faculty of Arts, it did not at once 
become customary to give this examination the name 
of baccalaureate,^ and not until the fifteenth century 
do we find the word " bachelor " plainly used to desig- 
nate a student who had successfully undergone the 
trial of the determinance. 

The determinance was, then, the first form of the 
bachelorship of arts. It was regularly established at 
Paris from 1275. In what did it consist? Deter- 
minare, in the barbarous Latin of the Middle Ages, 
was to posit a thesis, to argue a question,^ to explain 
a logical term or proposition, and to reply to objec- 

1 Finally, all celibates came to be called bachelors, ..." qui 
non habent uxorem." In English the word still retains this sig- 
nification. 

2 "The determinants or bachelors were not granted regular 
diplomas. The Nation merely sent them certificates of their degree " 
(Thurot, op. cit., p. 48) . 

3 The complete expression was determinare quxstionem. Crevier 
defines the " determinance " as a public act in which the candidates 
for bachelorship explained in a consecutive discourse some question 
of logic (Crevier, t. i, p. 398). 



160 ABELARD 

tions. There was as yet no question of written exer- 
cises, of essays, to be composed on a given subject. 
The teaching of the Middle Ages was altogether oral ; 
the great scholastic exercise was debate, discussion. 
And notwithstanding the modifications it underwent 
during the course of centuries, the determinance, 
or test for the bachelorship, remained, after the pat- 
tern of the studies which it assumed, an argumen- 
tation, a disputatio more formal than the others. It 
took place under the superintendence of one or more 
professors and in presence of the other students. It 
was, moreover, an internal examination, so to speak, 
and the title to which it gave a right did not need to 
be sanctioned by the chancellor. 

Certain conditions were imposed upon the candi- 
dates who desired to sustain the determinance : they 
must be at least fourteen years of age ; have pursued 
a course of logic during two years, etc. We shall see, 
moreover, over what books this course of logic ranged.^ 
M. Thurot maintains that this semi-domestic test of 
the determinance was '^of easy access." I do not 
absolutely deny this. It is, nevertheless, certain that 
a youth of fourteen or fifteen needed a good deal of 
strength of mind to undertake a public argumentation, 
prolonged through several days, before an audience 
which was sometimes imposing, the professors of the 
Superior Faculties and ecclesiastical dignitaries being 
invited to be present at it. " The determinant," says 
Thurot, " was obliged to argue every day during Lent, 
or, when for the Lenten discussions were substituted 

1 See Part III, chap. i. 



SYSTEM OF GRADUATION 151 

those of Cliristmas, during an entire month." ^ The 
d4termi7iance, properly so called, was followed, more- 
over, by a real examination ; that is, by interrogatories 
bearing on logic again, and on grammar, and which 
was conducted by examiners who had been grad- 
uated at least three years, and were elected by the 
Nations. The minor university title, the bachelor- 
ship, was not, after all, such an easy thing to win; 
and I should be disposed to agree on this point with 
Mr. Laurie : '• If we keep in mind," he says, " the 
youth of the candidates, the want of books, and the 
method of teaching, we shall be satisfied that even 
this minor degree marked the conclusion of a period 
of hard and sustained work. There was no food for 
the mind, but there was a great deal of severe disci- 
pline of the memory and intellect." ^ 

Originally established in the Faculty of Arts, the 
baccalaureate was afterwards extended to the other 
Faculties under special forms and conditions. Thus, 
the baccalaureate in theology implied three series of 
examinations. To enter the first, it was needful to 
be twenty-five years old, to have studied for ten years, 
and to be neither a bastard nor deformed. The candi- 
dates were examined on the principles of theology, 
and restricted, besides, to lectures on the Bible and to 

1 The details of the regulations of the test of the d^terminance 
were frequently modified. Toward the close of the thirteenth cen- 
tury, it was preceded by a private examination intended to serve as 
a first selection and elimination from the formal trial of candidates 
esteemed incapable. The time of the public dispute, which at first 
took place during Lent, was in the fifteenth century fixed between 
St. Martin's Feast, Nov. 11, and Christmas. 

2 Laurie, op. cit., p. 274. 



152 ABELARD 

argumentations. They were called hihlici ordinarii et 
cursores. The conditions for the second part of the 
baccalaureate were that one must have studied nine 
years, have given two courses on the Bible, and two 
conferences, or a sermon and a conference, in order to 
make proofs of a talent for preaching, and, finally, to 
sustain an argumentation called tentative; after which 
the candidate was authorized to read Peter Lombard's 
Book of the Sentences; finally, the bachelors of this 
second category, who were called the Senteyitiarii, when 
they had finished their course on the Sentences, be- 
came haccalarii formati, which was the last step to be 
taken before presenting themselves for the license.-^ 

The Faculties of Civil and of Canon Law, and the 
Faculties of Medicine had their bachelors also. At 
Bologna the "bachelor," of whom no mention is made 
until the end of the thirteenth century, was a law 
student who had followed the lectures of professors 
during several years, and who had been authorized to 
direct the extraordinary courses which were called repe- 
titions. For bachelor of medicine, five years of pre- 
liminary studies were required at Paris. The exami- 
nation was not public. For canon law, again at Paris, 
preliminary evidence of attainments in grammar and 
in logic was required ; but it was not necessary, as one 
might be tempted to suppose, to produce a diploma as 
bachelor of arts, which sufficiently proves that the vari- 
ous baccalaureates were internal examinations peculiar 
to each order of Faculties, and giving no rights in the 
others. Originally it was necessary to prove in addi- 
tion that one had studied civil law for three years 
1 See Part III, chap. ii. 



SYSTEM OF GRADUATION 163 

in another university (civil law not being taught at 
Paris). This condition, suppressed by Innocent VI, 
was replaced by the requirement that canon law should 
have been studied during forty-eight months within 
a period of, six years. These proofs having been 
supplied, the candidate had to submit to an examina- 
tion ; and afterwards to accomplish two public acts 
called propositum and harenga. The propositum was 
a decision grounded on one or two juridical questions ; 
the harenga was a discourse, an " harangue," in honor 
of canon law. The Faculties of Civil Law exacted 
similar proofs and conditions. 

It results from the foregoing remarks, that in all 
the faculties there was a baccalaureate,^ or first term 
of studies, sanctioned by appropriate examinations. 
This baccalaureate was really a degree, notwithstand- 
ing Thurot, who declares that it was simply "a state, 

1 1 shall not run the risk of taking sides between the different 
explanations proposed for the etymology of the word "baccalau- 
reate." Vallet de Viriville claims that it is derived from baculum 
(baton) by an analogy drawn from the contests in which young 
soldiers were exercised. Littre also admits that its origin must be 
sought in the word haculum, but he traces the filiation differently. 
" It is not an altogether unlikely conjecture," says he, " to suppose 
that the word baton, piece of wood, became a bachelerie, a sort of 
rural domain." We have already seen that to Littre the primitive 
signification of "bachelor" was the manager of a rural domain, 
Laurie suggests another explanation which to us appears wholly 
fantastic. "The original of the word seems to have been bacca- 
larius, and this is said to be derived from the low Latin bacca (for 
vacca) , a cow. Accordingly it originally meant a cowboy or herd 
serving a farmer." In any case, it is quite certain that we must 
reject as devised too late and devoid of serious foundation, that 
etymology by which the word bacccdarius, become baccalaureus, 
was supposed to have connection with the laurel berry. 



154 ABELARD 

the apprenticeship of the mastership " ; a grade, how- 
ever, which might be said to make one with the 
immediately superior degree, the license, a degree 
conferred by the faculties without the intervention 
of the chancellor. To-day, in France at least, in the 
Faculties of Letters and Sciences, the bachelors usu- 
ally consider the gaining of the diploma of the bac- 
calaureate as a definitive act which concludes their 
studies. The bachelor of the Middle Ages, on the 
contrary, was only an apprentice who aspired to the 
license and the mastership. It was said of the bach- 
elor of arts that indpiehat in artihus. The bachelors 
took part in the instruction given in their respec- 
tive faculties ; - they pursued courses then called 
extraordinary, now complementary, and which were 
added to the regular, or ordinary, courses taught 
by licentiates and doctors. The bachelors, then, did 
professional work ; they already practised, under the 
direction of masters, the instruction they intended to 
give. " The bachelorship," says Laurie, " had a pro- 
spective rather than a retrospective significance; that 
is to say, it did not so much mark a course finished as 
' inception in arts,' with a view to a mastership." ^ 

1 At Oxford and at Cambridge matters were regulated in much 
the same way, with possibly still greater precision. Four years' 
study was required before the d^terminance. Moreover, there were 
special and sufficiently odd titles given to express the different 
degrees of the scholastic term ; for example, the student who could 
present himself as a public disputant was called sophister generalis. 
The candidate for the baccalaureate who was called the questionist, 
before determinare quxstionem, must respondere ad qussstionem. 
See Mullinger for all these details, op. cit., p. 354. 



SYSTEM OF GRADUATION 165 

III 

If, as we have seen, the licentiate was the first aca- 
demic degree established in the order of time, it re- 
mained, even when the custom of preceding it by the 
baccalaureate had been confirmed, the degree par ex- 
celleyice, the most serious, the most important exam- 
ination, and, in certain faculties, the only serious and 
important one ; the mastership and the doctorate were 
but its natural consequence and consecration.^ 

The masters of arts at Paris seem to have taken part 
for the first time, in 1213, in the conferring of the li- 
centiate's degree. Six of them, three chosen by their 
colleagues and three by the chancellor, presented the 
candidates to the latter, attesting by an oath taken 
with their hands on the Gospels, that the aspirants 
merited the degree. Evidently they could not make 
this declaration until they had ascertained the capac- 
ity of the candidates by a preliminary examination. 
The manner of this examination was often modified, 
and I cannot hope to describe its successive and vary- 
ing forms. As in the case of the baccalaureate, there 
were antecedent conditions, — to be twenty-one years 
of age, unmarried, to have passed the determinance, 
either at Paris or some university which possessed 
a determinate number of regents, etc. There was 
some wisdom in these precautions taken by the 
Middle Ages in order to prove that the aspirants 

i"The mastership," says Thurot, "was to the licentiateship 
what the wedding party is to tlie nuptial benediction ; a ceremony 
celebrated in honor, and on occasion of, the Sacrament that has 
just been received." 



156 ABELAKD 

for degrees had pursued a regular course of studies ; 
but the rules too often remained a dead letter. The 
examination itself took place in the presence of the 
chancellor, assisted by various examiners chosen by 
him.^ It was not public, but what was then called 
an examination in cameris. Nevertheless, at certain 
periods, the candidate was obliged to give a public 
lecture. The examination was on grammar, logic, 
Aristotle's physics and morals, and also, as it appears, 
on the elements of mathematics and astronomy.^ It 
must not be forgotten, either, that the bachelors, as 
real apprentices, must at once practise teaching and 
give lessons to those of their younger comrades who 
were aspiring to the baccalaureate. 

In his opuscule entitled De Conscientia, Eobert de 
Sorbon ^ has given the most precise details concerning 
the examinations undergone by the candidates for the 
licentiate. The candidate, already a bachelor, sought 
the chancellor, and received from him a book upon 
which he was to be interrogated ; he carried it away 
with him, read it over, and then " noted and studied 
the questions wherein difficulties might be encoun- 
tered." Thus prepared, he returned to ask for a day 
on which he might be examined. He then made his 
appearance before a jury composed of the chancellor 
and several doctors, who made him debate the sub- 

1 There were differenops, moreover, between the examinations 
held before the Chancellor of Notre Dame and those that passed in 
presence of the Chancellor of Ste. Genevieve. See Thurot, p. 53. 

2 The rules enacted at the time of the reforms of 1366 and of 1452 
added metaphysics also. 

3 On Robert de Sorbon, see Part III, chap. ii. 



SYSTEM OF GRADUATION 157 

ject; they admitted him if he succeeded; if not, they 
put him back for a year. 

The licentiate was conferred in nearly the same way 
in the other Faculties. But the licentiates were less 
numerous ; in the Faculty of Theology, for instance, 
the conferring of the licentiate's degree took place 
every two years, in the year called the JuhiU. It was 
the same in the Faculties of Decrees and of Medicine. 

After the chancellor had conferred the licentiate- 
ship in arts, adding to it the apostolic benedictiou, 
the new licentiate had to be accepted by the masters 
in arts, in a sort of ceremony which properly consti- 
tuted the act of conferring the mastership. He pre- 
sented himself in the first place before the rector, 
promising to respect the statutes of the university, 
taking, in a word, an oath of university loyalty. 
Then, on a fixed day, he went in great pomp to the 
schools of his nation, in the rue du Fouarre, and 
there received the master's cap, the doctor's cap, 
from the master under whose direction he had pre- 
pared and undergone his examination for the licen- 
tiate. 

The mastership in arts was, in fact, equivalent to 
the doctorate. It was the highest title in this order 
of studies. It gave those invested with it the right 
to sit in professorial chairs. The appellation of doctor 
in arts was, it seems, never customary in Paris. 

The title of master and that of doctor were never, 
for that matter, clearly distinguished throughout the 
Middle Ages, even in the superior Faculties. In the 
University of Paris as in that of Bologna, for the 
theologians, the jurists, and the physicians, there was 



168 ABELARB 

a series of public examinations, or, at least, a series of 
ceremonies conducted with the most extreme formality, 
which followed the licentiate and terminated the stu- 
dent life in order to give access to the professorial 
career. This ensemble of acts was sometimes called 
the mastership and sometimes the doctorate.^ 

At Paris, mastership in the superior Faculties ad- 
mitted of even more formality, and especially more 
solemnity, than mastership in arts ; it pre-supposed 
three successive acts, called by different names ac- 
cording to the Faculties,^ in which argumentations and 
discourses alternated with ceremonies and rites hav- 
ing an almost religious character. It does not appear 
that mastership, at Paris, gave occasion for awarding 
a special diploma. At Bologna it was otherwise ; and 
Savigny affirms that diplomas were given there for 
the licentiate as well as for the doctorate. At Prague, 
the title of master was employed for the Faculties of 
Arts and of Theology ; the title of doctor for law and 
medicine. At Bologna, in the fourteenth century the 
law students underwent two sorts of examinations 
which, moreover, succeeded each other very closely,^ 
a private examination which resulted in the licentiate ; 
and a public one which resulted in the doctorate. In 

1 The title of doctor was especially customary in the Faculties of 
Law. At Bologna the professors of law regarded it as their exclu- 
sive property. 

2 These acts for the mastership in theology were called vesperies, 
aulique, and resompte ; for the mastership in medicine, vesperies, 
principium, and pastillaire. 

3 Savigny cites the example of a licentiate of Bologna who did 
not pass his examination for the doctorate until ten years after 
taking his license : it was a rare exception. 



SYSTEM OF GRADUATION 159 

the first of these, two texts (or themes) of Roman law 
and two of Canon law were assigned to the candidate. 
The jury was composed of three doctors who ques- 
tioned the candidate or argued against him. They 
were, said the regulations, to treat the candidate 
paternally, under penalty of a year's suspension. The 
second test, which was more solemn, was called the 
co7iventus; it most frequently took place in the cathe- 
dral, but sometimes within the school. There, the 
licentiate, a candidate for the doctorship, delivered a 
discourse and maintained a thesis in law. None but 
students argued against him. Then the archdeacon 
of Bologna or a doctor delegated by him, proclaimed 
the new doctor. He was given the insignia of his 
dignity, the book, the ring, and the doctor's cap, and 
was made to seat himself in a chair.^ There were, 
besides, three categories of doctors : in Roman law, 
in Canon Law, or both Roman law and Canon law 
at the same time. 

Things were conducted in much the same way at 
Montpellier. In the fourteenth century one became 
a doctor of law there in this wise : " The licentiate," 
says M. Germain, " according to the statutes of 1339, 
then 'led necessarily to the doctorate, and in some 
fashion made one thing with it; for it involved, in 
an express manner, the authorization to perform all 
the doctorial acts, Ucentia omnes actus doctorales agendi. 
The licentiate was the really serious degree. All be- 

1 Savigny, op. cit., chap. xxi. At Bologna, as at Paris, the students 
were obliged to give evidence of a certain number of years passed 
in study. Ten years were necessary to become a canonist, and eight 
to become a civilian. 



100 ABELARD 

yond it was purely ceremonial. The prior of the 
doctors (tlic eldest, or the elected chief) convoked 
the entire university in the church of St. Firmin to 
confer the licentiate. The candidate, inquiries having 
been made concerning his morals, his birth, and his 
capacity, drew by lot, at daybreak, in a book of civil 
or of canon law, the subject of his theses, and that 
very day between Nones and Vespers, after but a few 
hours of prej)aration, he went to defend them in the 
bishop's hall, in the house or palace ordinarily inhab- 
ited at Montpellier by the Bishop of Maguelonne. 
The Houtenance was an imposing affair. All the doc- 
tors of the faculty must be present and take an active 
part in it, in presence of the bishop or his delegate. 
Wh(}ii it was ov(;r they handed in their notes and pro- 
nounced a judgment in jiccordance with which the 
candidate was either admitted or adjourned. If he 
was adjourned for incajiacity he was informed of it 
secretly in such a way as to spare him all confusion. 
If, on the contrary, he passed, he was i)ublicly pro- 
(jhiinied doctoj', and by virtue of this decision, he 
might take the (hjctor's caj) whcni and where he chose, 
either at Montpellier or at any other university. If 
he immediately decided foi" Montpellier, the ceremony 
ol" liis rcc('])ti()n was at once ))roc(HHled with. The 
bell ol' th(; university summoned masters and students 
into tlie churcli of Noire Danut des Tables for tliat 
])urpose. The i-('ci])ient went thitlu^r escorted by his 
fri(}nds; and tlnsn^, in the midst of a throng anxious 
to do him lionor, h(^ comment(Hl on the text of a law or 
a, decr(U3; [li'Uw which the j)r(\si(l('nt ajj^ain intin-rogated 
the doctors on liis capacity, and admitted him to take 



SYSTEM OF GRADUATION 161 

the oath. The oath taken, he granted him the right 
to readj to teach, to instruct, in a word, to fulfil all 
the doctorial functions at Montpellier or elsewhere, 
conformably to the constitution of Pope Nicholas IV. 
Then the doctor whom the recipient had chosen as 
sponsor conferred on him the insignia of the doctor- 
ate, gave him investiture by the chair, the book, the 
cap, the kiss or the accolade, and the benediction.^ 

Complexity, as one sees, was not lacking in the 
form of the examinations of the Middle Ages. Never 
was beheld such a profusion of formalities, pompous 
ceremonials, solemn engagements and oaths, private 
and public argumentations, discourses and harangues. 
Never, moreover, did it cost more to obtain degrees, 
especially the higher degrees. To arrive at the doc- 
torate, particularly, one needed to be actually rich, 
rich in money still more than in knowledge. At Sala- 
manca, to intrigue for the honors of the doctorate, 
one of the formalities required from the candidate 
was to defray the expenses of a brilliant corrida de 
toros. Elsewhere, and almost everywhere, it was a 
question of paying for sumptuous banquets. At Bo- 
logna, the doctor-candidate had to furnish clothing 
for a large number of persons. Savigny relates that, 
in 1299, when the promotion was refused to Viane- 
sius, whose fault was that of not being related 
to the doctors whose duty it was to receive him, 
he had already spent five hundred livres in buy- 
ing scarlet cloth for pelisses. In 1311, Pope Clem- 
ent V decreed that the candidate should swear not 

1 Germain, Etude historique siir I'Ecole de Droit de Montpellier^ 
1877, p. 26. 



162 ABELARD 

to expend more than five hundred livres for his pro- 
motion.^ 

The baccalaureate and the licentiate were evidently 
not so costly as the doctorate, that actus triumphalis 
of graduation. But for these degrees also there was 
considerable expense for display. It has been said 
that in France everything ends in song ; in the uni- 
versities of the Middle Ages everything began and 
ended with banquets. A banquet before and after 
the determinance ; a banquet after the license; a ban- 
quet after each act of the mastership ; banquets always 
and everywhere. And these banquets sometimes as- 
sembled the whole Faculty, all the masters in arts, all 
the licentiates. Ramus complained, in the sixteenth 
century, that of the nine hundred livres which medical 
studies cost, three hundred were devoted to banquets. 

But, aside from the extraordinary expenses entailed 
by feasts and rejoicings, there was also a fixed tariff 
for the examinations. The Nations were paid, the 
Faculties, the beadles, the examiners, even the Chan- 
cellor himself was paid. Sometimes wine and spices 
were distributed to the examiners. There were plenty 
of regulations declaring that the licentiate's degree 
must be conferred gratuitously ; it was forbidden, for 
example, to receive anything from the candidate but 
four sous for the grass or straw strewn over the floors 
of the examination halls by the beadles, — straw in 
winter, grass in summer. But these prohibitions 
were constantly violated. In 1424, in the Nation of 

1 "To arrive at the title of master," says Thurot, "a man ex- 
pended his patrimony and exhausted the purse of his friends ; be 
often remained in debt and needy for the rest of his life," 



SYSTEM OF GRADUATION 163 

England, at Paris, it was customary to give half a 
franc for the determinance ; for the baccalaureate, when 
one repaired to the schools of the rue de Fonarre, 
four sous ; for the examination itself, two sous ; for 
the license, one franc, etc. The Faculties of decrees 
and of medicine in the Paris University seem to 
have been those in which the expenses of examination 
were greatest; the student in canon law gave four 
sous to each doctor-regent on the day of the harangue ; 
the licentiate offered repasts to the doctors, and paid 
for their wine while the examination lasted. So, too, 
the medical student, at the time he received the 
mastership, paid ten gold crowns to the president, and 
gave caps and gowns to all the master-regents. 

But it was not alone these fiscal abuses, these exor- 
bitant expenses which vitiated the system of examina- 
tions in the universities of the Middle Ages. What 
is to be said of the absence of publicity which was 
the common trait of most of the trials, except those 
which sinned in the other direction by excessive dis- 
play and external pomp ? The examiners showed 
extreme indulgence. They were sometimes obliged 
to reverse their decisions.^ Not a single case of a 
candidate who failed is found on the register of the 
Paris Medical Faculty from 1395 to 1500. The exam- 
inations were often mere formalities. Even this might 
be excused if attendance at the courses had been rig- 
orously required. But dispensations were frequently 
granted; and to pay for it was sometimes all that 
was necessary to obtain the certificate of attendance 

1 It must not be forgotten that the degrees were one of the prin- 
cipal sources of revenue to the professors. 



164 ABELARD 

during the scholastic term. Abuses were increased 
by the multiplication of universities ; they became 
each other's rivals and sold diplomas at a discount. 
"Composed of a small number of masters and stu- 
dents/' says Thurot, " the provincial universities were 
lax in their examinations and even sold their de- 
grees. Students bought their bachelor's degree there 
and went at once to Paris to obtain their license." 
But even at Paris trickery and corruption insinuated 
themselves *even into the solemn decisions pronounced 
when degrees were conferred. The examiners will- 
ingly displayed a certain partiality toward the nobles 
and the great. 

To sum up, in all that concerns the conferring of 
degrees, the universities of the Middle Ages seem to 
have drawn up admirable regulations on paper, much 
better ones than they succeeded in enforcing. It is in 
the system of examinations that their laxity is per- 
haps most evident — it appears also in the lack of 
discipline of the students, in the lack of regularity 
on the part of the professors — in the vices insepa- 
rable from a democratic government, where the chiefs, 
usually elected, were not always sufficiently inde- 
pendent to resist solicitations and offers of money, 
and where some anarchy was mixed with a great deal 
of liberty. 



Part III 

THE COURSE OF STUDY AND THE 
METHODS OF TEACHING 



CHAPTEK I 

THE FACULTIES OF ARTS 

I, The Faculty of Arts at Paris — The Schools of the Rue du 
Fouarre — A student's day's work — Description of the school- 
rooms — Costumes and other peculiarities — Ordinary and ex- 
traordinary lessons — The bachelors and the masters — The dispu- 
tations — II. The classic books — Statutes of Robert de Courgon 
— Logical works of Aristotle — Grammar of Priscian — Books 
reserved for the exti-aordinary lessons — Works at first prohibited 
afterwards authorized — Intellectual dictature of Aristotle — 
III. The methods of teaching — The exposition — The questions — 
Defects of these processes of servile interpretation or merely 
formal discussion — The scarcity of books a principal cause of 
the methods used in the mediaeval universities — Superstitious 
reverence for texts — Abuse of the disputation — IV. Mixed char- 
acter of the Faculty of Arts ; a school at once of superior and 
secondary instruction — Modification of its first organization — 
The "pedagogies " and the colleges — Importance of the colleges 
in Paris — The lodging-houses, hostelries, and colleges in Oxford 
and Cambridge — Merton College — The system of boarding- 
schools substituted for the old liberty 

I 

Let us transport ourselves in thonglit to Paris, in 
any year you please of the thirteenth, or fourteenth 
century, and in any clay of autumn or winter, from 
the morrow of St. Denis (October 10) to the first Sun- 
clay of Lent. The bells of the cathedral of Notre 
Dame, which are heard in all the quarters where the 
students reside, on the river banks, and on the heights 

167 



168 ABELARD 

of Ste. Genevieve, almost as clearly as in the streets 
adjoining tlie city ^ — the bells of Notre Dame have 
just announced with a great clamor that the hour has 
struck for the re-assembling of the classes in all the 
schools. 

It is very early in the morning; dawn has not yet 
broken. The customs of a rude and vigorous society 
which has no fear of overdriving, do not permit young 
men " to spend in slumber the time most precious for 
study." At live o'clock,^ or six o'clock at latest, at 
the moment when the Carmelites of the Place Mau- 
bert ring the bell for their first mass, the Kegents of 
the Faculty of Arts resume their customary lessons. 
From every direction great numbers of students quit- 
ting the private houses, hotels, or colleges, where 
they live, turn toward the Rue du Fouarre,^ where most 
of the schools are established. The street is closed : 
a barrier prevents the entrance of pedestrians or of 
carriages, the noise of which might disturb the scho- 
lastic exercises ; a turnkey opens the door to students 
and closes it behind them.'* Other students, but in 

1 It is known that the City, that is to say, the little island on 
which Notre Dame is built, had been originally the centre of 
studies ; but gradually the schools and scholars crossed the bridges 
and established themselves on the left bank of the Seine, in what 
is still known as the Latin Quarter. 

2 In some verses entitled : Of the Unhappy Condition of those 
who Study at Paris, Buchanan complains, about 1526, that in his 
time the bells still rang at five in the morning. 

3 The Rue du Fouarre got its name from an old word signifying 
" straw," on account of the straw spread on the ground in the class- 
rooms. 

4 In reality, the Rue du Fouarre was not closed until 1403, by 
authority of the Provost of Paris. 



THE FACULTIES OF AETS 169 

smaller numbers, present themselves in the Clos- 
Briineau.-^ With the latter mingle youths of a more 
advanced age, and even mature men; these are stu- 
dents of the Faculty of Decretal, which also has its 
exercises in the Clos-Bruneau. All of them are de- 
cently and modestly clad, as is enjoined by the rules. 
Their robes are long, closed in front, and floating; 
about the neck they have a short scarf, and on the 
head a sort of skull-cap, and they wear short shoes. 
It is in spite of constantly renewed regulations that 
some of them, under pretext of being noblemen, are 
carrying small-arms, daggers or poniards; and that 
others, in imitation of the dandies of the period, 
have short, close-fitting coats, caps trimmed with 
diverse ornaments, and long shoes, pointed and turned 
up at the toes. But in general the dress is simple, 
almost poor; and these students, nearly all of whom 
wear the same black uniform, resemble the young 
ecclesiastics of our modern seminaries. 

Their scholastic equipment is small; almost nothing 
beyond what is necessary for writing. They carry 
a copy-book for the purpose of taking notes during 
the professor's lecture, and also, when they are able, 
a manuscript copy of the work which is to be the sub- 
ject of the lecture, a Priscian's grammar, or a trans- 
lation of Aristotle: manuscripts which they have 
borrowed or bought, often at a high price, from the 

1 Now the Kue St. Jean de Beauvais. Until 1202, the Clos-Bruneau 
was a vineyard belonging to the Bishop of Paris, who ceded it in 
order that houses might be built there. As a great number of stu- 
dents could find no room in the Rue du Fouarre, the Faculty of 
Arts spread into the Eue Bruneau. 



170 ABELARD 

librarian, or the Stationarius, who, as his name im- 
plies, stations himself close to the schools so as to 
provide the scholars with paper and books. 

Let us enter at hazard a class-room in a school. 
There are plenty of them, but they are all much alike, 
and in each a master assembles the pupils who have 
registered themselves to follow his course, for instruc- 
tion which is everywhere the same. The student has 
not, in fact, the right to go to one school on this day 
and another on that. There must not be a single 
student at Paris without his determinate master {qui 
certum magistrum non haheat).'^ 

The class-room is in nowise luxurious, or even com- 
fortable.^ The school furniture is of the simplest, 
being composed of nothing but a platform chair and 
desk for the master. The pupils sit on the ground, 
which the beadle has taken care to cover with a little 
straw, as a preventive against dampness or dust. 
That there are no seats for the students, is due in the 
first place, assuredly, to economy, because there is no 
money to buy any; but it seems that a moral notion 
also underlies the fact; as late as 1451 the students 
will still be enjoined to sit on the ground, and not on 
chairs or benches, in order, they will be told, that they 
may escape all temptation to pride. 

The professor mounts his platform; he is a master- 
regent of the Faculty of Arts. He is very young, for 

1 Chartularium Univ. Paris., t. i, p„ 79. 

2 In the thirteenth century, each master hired a class-room on 
his own account. Later on, toward the close of the same century, 
the Nations bought the schools of the Rue du Fouarre and allotted 
them among the masters. 



THE FACULTIES OF AKTS 171 

he is just beginning; he was not promoted to the mas- 
tership until a few months ago, and he was then only 
twenty-one years old. He wears a black gown with 
a furred cowl, conformably to the statutes of 1215, 
wherein Kobert de CourQon had prescribed that "no 
master, reading in arts, shall wear anything but a 
chape, or cope, round and black, and reaching to the 
heels, at least when he is a new beginner. '^ ^ 

The lessons commence as soon as the prayers of 
thanksgiving have been recited. The professor has a 
text -book, or, perhaps, several text -books, before him ; 
for it is still customary in the Faculty of Arts to 
explain several books during the same lesson, both in 
grammar and logic. ^ He reads slowly, and in a Ioav 
voice, voce submissa, each sentence of the text; then 
he comments on it and paraphrases it while the silent 
and attentive students diligently transfer the words of 
their master to their copy-books.^ In the school we 
have entered, the master has written down beforehand 
all he has to say ; in the neighboring school, they say, 
the professor extemporizes; but the majority of the 
masters find it more convenient to dictate their courses 
from a manuscript, and the students themselves prefer 
this method of instruction. There are even schools, 
or so it is alleged, where the master contents himself 

1 Nullus . . . haheat capam nisi rotundam, nigram et talarem, 
saltern dum nova est {Chartularium Univ. Paris., t. i, p. 73). 

2 "In the thirteenth century," says Thurot, "several different 
books were explained during the same lesson." 

3 The students, however, sometimes departed from their habitual 
calmness. When the Faculty, in 1355, wished to prohibit dictated 
courses, there was almost a riot in the Rue du Fouarre ; the students 
hooted, hissed, stamped, and threw stones. 



172 ABELAKD 

with handing over his manuscript to a student, who 
reads it in his place. ^ 

Beginning at about six in the morning, the ordinary 
lessons are protracted with no haste on the part of the 
master. In fact, it is not until nine o'clock that some- 
what different exercises, the extraordinary courses, 
must begin. 

The extraordinary courses are still given in the Rue 
du Fouarre, but other courses of the same kind are 
taught almost anywhere, at the option of the profes- 
sors.- They may give extraordinary lessons even in 
their chambers. These are the same students whom we 
shall presently meet again at the extraordinary course, 
but neither the same master, nor the same books of in- 
struction will be there. The professor is still more 
youthful than he who gave the ordinary lesson in the 
morning. Although the masters of arts also give 
extraordinary courses, it is a simple bachelor who is 
now about to teach. He is barely seventeen or eigh- 
teen years old; and he might be younger still, since 
they go up for the baccalaureate at fourteen or fifteen. 
Nor is the costume the same ; both masters and bach- 
elors, when they teach extraordinary, may wear gowns 

1 In 1355, and again in 1366, the practice of dictating lessons was 
forbidden. The lectures were to be delivered in "a continuous 
discourse." But these rules were not observed, although each new 
master was obliged to swear that he would conform to them. The 
indolence of professors, and of students likewise, carried the day, 
and the use of dictation prevailed. 

■■2 In 1355, nevertheless, the Faculty forbade extraordinary courses 
to be given anywhere except in the schools of the Nations ; that is 
to say, in those of the Rue du Fouarre. 



THE FACULTIES OF ARTS 173 

of any material they please. As to the books which 
form the subject of the lesson, they are no longer the 
classic Avorks of grammar and logic which constitute 
fundamental instruction, but Aristotle's treatises on 
ethics, which have always been authorized; and, when 
the prohibition of earlier days shall have been re- 
moved, they will be the works of the same author on 
metaphysics and physics. Again, they may be some 
elementary book on rhetoric, or a treatise relating to 
the sciences comprised in the quadrivium, — arithme- 
tic, geometry, or astronomy. 

The students whose day's work we are following are 
not merely present at a single extraordinary course.^ 
Since 1254, the Faculty of Arts has authorized two ex- 
traordinary courses on days when the ordinary lessons 
are given, and three on holidays, when the latter are 

1 1 italicize the word course because the extraordinary lecture 
was given ad ciirsum, cursorie. The meaning of these expressions 
has been much disputed. Some authors have thought they must be 
imder stood to indicate a somewhat different method of exijlication, 
the lectures given cursorie or extraordinarie not admitting so ex- 
haustive an interpretation as those given ordinarie. To illustrate 
this view the fact has been cited that at the University of Prague 
the bachelors had to abide by the reading of the text in these ex- 
traordinary courses, and had no right to comment on it. But in 
opposition to this opinion it must be observed that both Masters in 
Arts and titular professors gave extraordinary lessons, and that it 
is improbable that these masters changed their usual simple style 
when speaking at different hours and on other books. I think 
that a cursory lecture meant a course distinct from the regular 
elementary lessons ; what we call nowadays, in our French Facul- 
ties, complementary courses or conferences, in contradistinction 
to the authoritative professional lectures. This opinion has been 
strongly stated and maintained by Mullinger (op. cit., appendix E.). 



174 ABELARB 

omitted, but which are not, for all that, days of com' 
plete repose. The student of the Middle Ages is 
accustomed to spend the greater part of the day, or 
about seven hours, in class with his masters.^ Bu- 
chanan will say, in the sixteenth century: "A short 
interval is grudgingly allowed for dinner." It is not 
until evening, after the diversions at the meadow 
of St. Gervais, the " field of sports " of the university 
of the Middle Ages, and perhaps after a halt in some 
wineshop, that the student, re-entering his chamber,- 
at last has time for his personal tasks — tasks, more- 
over, of the most restricted and mechanical sort, 
since, for want of books, they are usually limited to 
copying, recopying, and revising the notes taken at 
the courses, or learning them by heart. 

Lessons upon lessons, in one form or another, are, 
then, the habitual exercises daily offered to its pupils 
by the Faculty. Once a week, however, the usual 
monotony of instruction and of studies is interrupted 
by the hebdomadal disputation. The masters as- 
semble together every Saturday, and hold a discussion 
on some given subject in the presence of the students. 
True, it is merely a spectacle as yet, at which the 
youngest students may be present without participat- 

1 1 cannot agree with the judgment formed by a writer of our 
day (M. Lecoy de la Marche, in his interesting work, La Chaire 
Franraise an moyen age, Paris, 1886, p. 456), who claims that "the 
methods of the Middle Ages left a great deal to the initiative of the 
student . . . and permitted him to work alone." The contrary is 
true. 

'■^ In the earliest times "each scholar inhabited, alone or with a 
comrade, some modest tavern chamber, with his little collection of 
volumes or rolls of parchment" (Lecoy de la Marche, op. cit., p. 
401). 



THE FACULTIES OF ARTS 175 

ing ; nevertheless, they are already learning, in these 
dialectical tournaments and passages at arms, to de- 
velop an enthusiasm for the art of discussion. They 
take sides for the respondens or for the opponens,^ 
and are thus preparing to become subtle and daring 
disputants, on the day when, promoted to the bacca- 
laureate, their turn will come to be admitted to the 
honor and the risk of disputing publicly. 



II 



The sketch I have just made, incomplete as it may 
be, has already given a general idea of the studies in 
the Faculty of Arts at Paris ; and also — Paris being 
the great model for this kind of instruction — in the 
other universities. Arts signified in the first place the 
ancient trivium and the ancient quadrivium, with a 
marked emphasis on dialectic; it also meant philoso- 
phy, which, with the works of Aristotle on psychol- 
ogy, ethics, the natural and physical sciences, and 
metaphysics, gradually made its way into the schools, 
so successfully that the Faculty of Arts became a 
Faculty of Philosophy. Let us see, now, in order to 
get a complete notion, what were the classic books of 
instruction in arts. 

The most ancient rule of studies in the University 
of Paris dates from 1215; it was drawn up by the 
Cardinal-Legate, Eobert de CourQon.^ 

1 The respondens defended a thesis {respondebat de questione) , 
while the opponens attacked it. 

2 Chartularium Univ. Paris., t. i, p. 781. 



176 ABELARD 

The works which, according to these first statutes, 
must be read in the ordinary lessons, were the follow- 
ing: 1. Aristotle's treatises on logic; 2. Priscian's 
grammar. The text of the rule says : libros Aristotelis 
de cUalectica tarn de veteri quam de nova; et duos Pris- 
cianos. These words require some explanation. 
Ancient dialectic, as we learn from the later regula- 
tions of 1252 and 1255,^ comprised various portions of 
the Organon, either interpreted by Porphyry ^ or 
translated by Boethius ; ^ and in addition, several 
special works by Boethius: — 1. what was called the 
liber Porphyrii, that is, his Introduction to the Cate- 
gories of Aristotle, translated from the Greek in the 
fourth century by the Latin writer Victorinus and 
annotated by Boethius; 2. the Predicaments (jpredica- 
menta), which also are the categories of Aristotle, 
doubtless in the translation made by Boethius ; 3. the 
Interpi'etatio or Hermeyieia^ {periarmenias, in the bar- 
barous text of the statute of 1255); 4. finally, the 
Divisions and Topics of Boethius (with the exception 
of the fourth book of the Topics). The new logic, 
doubtless so called because it was not known by 
Abelard and his contemporaries, was, nevertheless, 

1 Chartularium Univ. Paris., t. i, pp. 228, 278. 

2 Porphyry, an Alexandrian philosopher (233-305 A.D.). 

3 Boethius, a Latin philosopher, born in 470 or 475, died in 524. 
He had a great influence on the studies of the Middle Ages. Besides 
his other works, original and translated, which I cite in this chapter, 
his treatise De Consolatione was studied in the schools. 

4 The Hermeneia was already as in the time of Abelard, who 
has written "Aristotelis duos tantum, * Prsedicamentorum ' scilicet 
et 'Peri Ermenias,' libros usus adhuc Latinorum cognovit." 



THE FACULTIES OF ARTS 177 

the old dialectic of Aristotle, Latinized by Boethius. 
It comprised the other portions of the Organon : the 
Prior Analytics^ the book par excellence, since it con- 
tained the theory of the syllogism; the Posterior 
Analytics, or the theory of demonstration; the Topics; 
and lastly the Elenchi, or the Arguments of the 
Sophists. 

To these works on pure, deductive, and formal logic, 
it is somewhat surprising to find the programme 
adding Priscian's grammar on the same scheme of 
studies, or, to be more exact, the two Priscians. The 
first Priscian, Priscianus major, comprised the first 
sixteen chapters of the Institutio grammatica of the cele- 
brated Latin grammarian ; ^ the other, Priscianus minor, 
the last two cha|)ters of the same work. On one side 
the abstract rules of reasoning; on the other, the 
abstract rules of language ; such was, naturally enough, 
the substratum of instruction at a period when men 
neglected the study of things, realities, in order to 
occupy themselves solely with logical and grammati- 
cal forms. 

Let us see now what were the texts reserved for the 
extraordinary courses, " for the feast days " (festivis 
diebus), as the statutes of 1215 call them; which shows 
that extraordinary courses were originally given on 
holidays only. It must not be forgotten, however, 
that there were nearly one hundred annual holidays. 
Among these books, only half classic, as we may say, 
and which in any case ranked as merely secondary in 

1 Priscian (fifth century) had kept a famous school at Constan- 
tinople. 



178 ABELARD 

the estimation of both masters and scholars, several 
again related to grammar or to logic. Among this 
number were the fourth book of Topics by Boethius, 
eliminated, no one knows why, from the ordinary 
lessons; and the Barbarism, a now nearly forgotten 
work by Donatus,^ the grammarian of the fourth cen- 
tury, which treated of grammatical figures.^ But this 
second list of the plan of studies of 1215 includes 
also works of quite a different range, since it com- 
prises the Ethics of Aristotle; that is to say, the 
Nicomachean Ethics. True, this was an elective 
study; one read it si placet. The extraordinary 
courses, also, gave a good deal of attention to rhetoric, 
and to what was summed up in a single word as the 
quadrivialia, or works relating to the arts of the 
quadrivium. 

But the works of Aristotle, in spite of the supersti- 
tious veneration with which the name of the philoso- 
pher was already honored, were far from being 
acceptable as a whole to the suspicious orthodoxy 
of the Church, then sovereign mistress of studies. 
"Let no one," said Robert de CourQon, "read either 
the Metaphysics or the Natural Philosophy of Aristotle, 
or the abridgments (summoi) of these works ; nor " he 
added, linking Aristotle with the heretics of the 

1 Donatus was the master of St. Jerome. The Barbarism was the 
third book of his Ars major. 

2 In the statutes of 1252 and 1255 another modern work appears, 
the Sex principia of Gilbert de la Porre'e, Bishop of Poitiers, born 
in 1070, died in 1154. He had taught theology at Paris. The Six 
principles were on the Categories of Aristotle. (See Haure'au, de la 
Philosophic Scholastique, t. i, p. 298.) 



THE FACULTIES OF ARTS 179 

period, " the writings of David of Dinant, ^ the heretic 
Amauriy^ or the Spaniard Mauricius."^ 

Time was necessary before the prohibited portions 
of Aristotle's works should obtain right of entrance 
into the schools of the Faculty of Arts. The Bull 
of Gregory IX, in 1231,^ regulating instruction in 
arts, again insisted on the needful exclusion of his 
books on natural philosophy, at least "until they 
shall have been examined and expurgated." It was 
in 1255 that Aristotle's Physics, interdicted until 
then under pain of excommunication, was officially 
authorized at Paris, simultaneously with his meta- 
physics, the work de Animalibus, and the treatise 
on the Soul : in a word, all of the greater and lesser 
works of the Greek philosopher, which thenceforward 
entered, in their totality and triumphantly, into the 
university schools, to exercise there for several cen- 
turies an intellectual domination whose equal it 
would be impossible to find in the history of human 
thought. Certain other universities had preceded 

1 David of Dinant had taught at Paris in the twelfth century ; 
he maintained the pantheistic proposition that "every creature is 
God." 

2 Amauri of Bena had been a professor at Paris in the twelfth 
century ; he was considered one of the promoters of the sect of the 
Albigenses. Persecuted and condemned during his life, he was so 
even after his death in 1204. " Corpus magistri Amaurici extra- 
hatur a cemeterio et projiciatur in terram, non benedictam," said the 
decrees of the Provincial Council of Paris in 1210. 

3 Mauricius is unknown, and M. Renan has claimed (Averroes et 
r Averroisme) that Averroes should be read here instead of Mauri- 
cius. But it is plain from a passage of Albertus Magnus, cited by 
Pere Denifle {Chartularium, etc., t. i, p. 80), that Mauricius was a 
philosopher quite distinct from Averroes. 

* Chartularium, etc., t. i, p. 138. 



180 ABELARD 

Paris in this wholesale adoption of Aristotle. Thus, 
in 1229, the professors of Toulouse, in a letter ad- 
dressed to the other universities, boasted among 
other advantages possessed by their university, that 
students might there study "the libri naturales pro- 
hibited at Paris," and thus penetrate to their depths, 
even to their marrow, the secrets of nature (naturae 
sinum medullitus perscrutari) .^ 

It must not be forgotten, however, as I have 
already remarked, that everything in the works of 
Aristotle which displayed the spirit of observation 
and the experimental researches of Plato's great rival, 

— all that was called at Toulouse the physica realis, 

— was relegated to the second place, and almost 
ranked, among what we call nowadays optional studies. 
The statutes of 1255 determine the number of weeks, 
especially in the latter half of the year, that may be 
devoted to these lectures, which had not as yet the 
honor of a regular and continuous course, and which 
could only be treated superficially. Logic manifestly 
held the first place. To reason well had become the 
whole duty of the studious man. There was no 
thought of knowing the history of humanity, still 
less of observing the phenomena of nature. If rheto- 
ric was occasionally taken up, it was in order to 
draw from it certain rules of pure form, not to seek 
insight into the beauties of literature. The master- 
pieces of classic antiquity were unknown. Dialectic 
had invaded all things; the syllogism was of uni- 
versal application. " Logic," says Thurot, " was 
regarded as the art of arts, the science of sciences." 

1 Chartulariwn, etc., t. i, p. 131. 



THE FACULTIES OF ARTS 181 

The successive reforms in the University of Paris 
made very little modification in the plan of studies 
that I have outlined. The reform of Cardinale St. 
Marc and Montaigu, in 1366, merely replaced Pris- 
cian's grammar by Alexandre de la Villedieu's ^ famous 
book, the Doctrinale puerorum, written in leonine verse, 
which remained the grammatical text-book until it 
was in turn dethroned by the grammar of Despautere 
in the sixteenth century. The reform of Cardinal 
d'Estouteville, in 1452, on the eve of the Eenaissance, 
left things pretty much as they were. '^ Aristotle," 
says Crevier,^ " was still in possession of all his glory." 
And he adds, "As yet there was no question of 
rhetoric." 

I have spoken of the Faculty of Arts at Paris only ; 
but the programmes were the same everywhere. I 
have before me, for example, the statutes of the Faculty 
of Toulouse in 1309,^ in which are found the same 
books, but with the difference that Aristotle's Ethics 
and Physics occupy a more important place. Thus, 
the ten books of Mcomachean Ethics had to be read 
in two years, and read from one end to the other 
(legantur complete). Another distribution of subjects 
is made, and a different order proposed for the succes- 
sion of lectures ; but it is always, as one may say, the 
same game of cards, though played in another style. 
Aristotle reigns as sovereign master at Oxford, and 

1 Crevier, t. ii, p. 450, Alexandre de la Villedieu, born in Nor- 
mandy, composed his Doctrinale in 1209. 

2 Crevier, t. iv, p. 190. The greatest novelty of the reform of 
1452, with reference to the studies in the Faculty of Arts, was the 
introduction of the study of Latin versiiication. 

3 M. Fournier, t. i, p. 465. 



182 ABELARD 

Cambridge also. But it seems that he is less directly 
approached, and that logic is studied chiefly in abridg- 
ments and epitomes. ''The most popular text-book 
of logic," says Laurie, " was for centuries the Summu- 
Ice of Petrus Hispanus."^ So likewise Mullinger : 
" For two centuries and a half the Summulm logicales 
reigned supreme in the schools."^ A part of this 
work, entitled Parva Logicalia, was the standard book 
at Leipsic and Prague.^ 

It remains to be shown in what manner the stan- 
dard works, of which I have drawn up a list, were 
distributed throughout the two periods of study ; one 
of which constituted the preparation for the bacca- 
laureate, and the other for the licentiateship. The 
candidate for the determinance, at the end of the 
thirteenth and during the fourteenth century, must 
have studied, either in ordinary or extraordinary 
courses, all of Aristotle's works on logic, Priscian's 
grammar, Boethius's Divisions and Topics, Donatus's 
Barbarism, and the Six Principles of Gilbert de la 
Porree. Aspirants to the licentiate's degree must 
have studied the same books, and, further, must 
have heard Aristotle's treatises on physics, psychol- 
ogy, and ethics. They must also have attended a 
hundred lectures on mathematics and astronomy. 
The statutes of the University of Vienna, in 1389, 
required the study of five books of Euclid,* and 

1 Petrus Hispanus was none other than Pope John XXI, who 
occupied the pontifical throne from 127G to 1277. 

2 Mullinger, op. cit., p. 178. 

3 The Parva Logicalia (the seventh treatise of the Summulse) 
were also studied at Paris. See Thurot, p. 47. 

^ There was a translation of Euclid due to Boethius. 



THE FACULTIES OF ARTS 183 

also of the book on the sphere, doubtless the Spliera 
mundi of the English computer, John of Holywood, 
better known under the Latinized name of Sacrobosco, 
and whose works remained classic down to the six- 
teenth century. Another work mentioned in the 
programme of the University of Vienna was the 
Theory of the Planets, a treatise by the Italian 
mathematician, Campano of Novara.^ In 1427, the 
same work was taught at Paris. Little by little the 
Middle Ages threw off the yoke of pure scholasticism, 
and acquired a taste for the sciences; at the same 
time, toward the close of the fourteenth century, and 
more especially in the fifteenth, literary studies, such 
as rhetoric and poetry, dependencies of grammar, 
began to be cultivated with ardor, in spite of the 
resistance offered by the old scholasticism, whose 
motto was : " Good grammarian, bad logician." 

Ill 

We know now what were the texts and the authors 
upon which the attention of those who were called 
artists was concentrated during three or four cen- 
turies, and which sufficed for the intellectual educa- 
tion of a long series of generations, — the arts then 
constituting the general instruction received by all 
students, even those who were later on to pursue 
special courses in the Faculties of Theology, Law, or 

1 Music, the fourth art of the quadrivium, was not altogether 
neglected; it was studied at Vienna, and notably at Salamanca. 
At Paris it was but little cultivated ; it appears occasionally in 
connection with the chants of the Church. 



184 ABELARD 

Medicine. We have yet to examine the methods fol- 
lowed in the explanation of these authors. 

Thurot, and Mullinger after Thurot, have described 
very exactly the two essential processes of the pro- 
fessors of the Middle Ages. The first consisted in 
examining the text {expositio) ; the second, in discuss- 
ing it (qumstiones) . "The method pursued," says 
Mullinger, "appears to have been of two kinds, of 
which Aquinas's Commentary on Aristotle and the 
Qumstiones of Buridanus on the Ethics may be taken 
as fair specimens." ^ 

The first step was a work of subtle analysis, 
wherein the commentator twisted in every way pos- 
sible the text to be examined, and, indeed, dissected 
it. " The lecturer," says Thurot, translated by Mul- 
linger, "commenced by discussing a few general 
questions, having reference to the treatise which he 
was called upon to explain, and, in the customary 
Aristotelian fashion, treated of its material, formal, 
final, and efl&cient causes. He pointed out the princi- 
pal divisions ; took the first division and subdivided 
it ; divided again the subdivision, and repeated the 
process until he had subdivided to the first chapter. 
He then again divided, until he had reached a sub- 
division which included only a single sentence or 
complete idea. He finally took this sentence, and 
expressed it in other terms which might serve to 
make the conception more clear. He never passed 
from one part of the work to another, from one chap- 
ter to another, or even from one sentence to another, 

1 Mullinger, op. cit., p. 359. Thurot had said the same thing 
before Mullinger, and in the same terms (op. cit., p. 74, in note). 



THE FACULTIES OF ARTS 185 

with a minute analysis of the reasons for which each 
division, chapter, or sentence was placed after that 
by which it was immediately preceded." ^ Each day 
this painful and tedious labor was renewed, and it 
could have no other result but to give the auditors 
as exact a knowledge as possible of a text indefinitely 
analyzed and paraphrased. 

The other method, which was no longer a servile 
commentary on the text, and in which the spirit of 
liberty already manifested itself to a certain degree, 
consisted in applying to all doubtful questions, sus- 
ceptible of being discussed in various senses, the pro- 
ceeding that had been adopted by Abelard in the Sic 
et Non. " Whenever a passage presented itself that 
admitted of a twofold interpretation, the one or the 
other interpretation was thrown into the form of a 
qucestio, and then discussed pro and contra, the argu- 
ments on either side being drawn up in the usual for- 
mal way. . . . Finally the lecturer brought forward 
his own interpretation, and defended it against every 
objection to which it might appear liable; each 
solution being formulated in the ordinary syllogistic 
fashion, with major, minor, and conclusion." 

The defects of such instruction are evident. Either 
one was bound by the text which he was simply 
endeavoring to comprehend, and which was appre- 
ciated only from the standpoint of order and method, 
and the logical value of propositions ; or, using the 
same text, he gave himself over to a purely dialecti- 
cal argument, circumscribed strictly by the limits of 
the given subject. No appeal to the imagination, still 

1 Mullinger, p. 360, and Thurot, p. 73. 



186 ABELARD 

less to observation, experience, or fruitful induction, 
was made. Nothing but a vain and empty verbiage, 
endless distinctions, and a sterile tramping over a 
single spot. 

In studying the pedagogic methods of any person in 
which they were developed, allowance must be made 
for the environment; it must be remembered that 
they were not always the effect of an a priori system 
or reasoned-out conception, but were often the neces- 
sary result of circumstances ; in a word, that they 
were employed not as the best that could be thought 
of, but as the only ones possible at a given period 
in history and with the resources at one's disposal. 
So in the Middle Ages it was the multitude of pupils 
to be taught, on one hand, and the scarcity of books 
on the other, rather than a preconceived pedagogic 
theory, which was the chief reason why the methods 
then in use were adopted. Students being unable to 
possess their own text-books, as at present, how was 
it possible to make them acquainted with the classic 
author, unless by a complete reading and most de- 
tailed, laborious, monotonous, and yet necessary expla- 
nations ? So, too, the pupil, having no means, as in 
our days, with which to supplement the master's les- 
sons by private study with the aid of books treating 
of the same subjects, the lecture could not be a rapid 
exposition, whiclr' merely allowed certain brief notes 
to be taken. Finally, was it not from the same causes 
that another defect j^roceeded, — the abuse of memory 
by learning things by heart ? It was necessary to 
engrave literally on the mind what it was not possi- 
ble to find again in books, because one had no books. 



THE FACULTIES OF ARTS 187 

It was necessary to make up for the absence of libra- 
ries. . . . What, for that matter, is a mind orna- 
mented and enriched by souvenirs retained word for 
word, if not a miniature living library ? 

Yet there were at least two things in the pedagogic 
errors of the Middle Ages for which the excuse of 
circumstances cannot be pleaded, and in which .the 
real genius, the evil genius of this period of human 
education, so inferior on many sides, is plainly marked : 
on one hand the superstitious reverence for texts, and 
on the other, the abuse of dialectic and discussion. 

That the men of the sixteenth century, crushed, 
one might say, under the avalanche of books which 
the newly invented art of printing threw down upon 
them should remain in general humanists rather than 
realists, readers rather than observers of nature, may 
readily be conceived. But that, in the Middle Ages, 
so many successive generations of laborious and stu- 
dious men should have consented for centuries to 
grow pale over a small number of texts, always the 
same, re-read and commented on to satiety, gnawing, 
as it were, the same bone forever, is a thing that can 
only be explained by supposing a special cast of 
mind, an extraordinary intellectual passivity, a com- 
plete absence of initiative and spontaneity. Since 
there were hardly any books, it seems as if it would 
have been so simple to turn to another side and study 
things in themselves ; to open, in fine, the great book 
of nature. But no ; men preferred to keep on repeat- 
ing, mechanically and laboriously, paraphrases scru- 
tinized a hundred times already ; to close their eyes 
to the realities of the world, in order to concentrate, 



188 ABELARD 

and at the same time to squander, on certain pages of 
marvellously bad Latin, prodigious efforts of atten- 
tion. It would not have been so had they clung to 
the spirit of an author in studying him. But no ; it 
was the letter, the literal form, which they scruti- 
nized. 

"The distinctive character of instruction in the 
Middle Ages," Thurot^ has justly said, ''is that 
science was not taught directly and in itself, but 
by the explanation of books which derived their 
authority solely from their writers." This principle 
was acted on in all the Faculties, and Koger Bacon 
thus formulates it: "When one knows the text, one 
knows all that concerns the science wliich is the 
object of that text."^ They did not speak in the 
Middle Ages of "taking- a course of logic or of 
ethics," but of ^^ reading a book on logic or ethics." 
Instead of "following a course," "hearing a book" 
was always the phrase used {legere or audire librum). 
Such methods were evidently a mere extension to 
human studies of the habits contracted in the study 
of theology. Just as there were sacred books con- 
taining all truths from the religious point of view, 
and needing only to be commented on and learned 
by heart, so, from the scientific point of view, there 
must be traditional books whose substance it was 
sufficient to extract by perpetual deductions in order 
to acquire all permitted knowledge. Although, in a 
word, the school might be said to be distinct from 

1 Thurot, op. cit, p. 65. 

2 Scito textu, sciuntur omnia quse pertinent ad facultatem prop- 
ter quam textiis suntfacti. R. Bacon, Ojjus Majus. 



THE FACULTIES OF ARTS 189 

the Church, nevertheless the methods of the Church 
reigned in the school, and the professors taught just 
as the preachers exhorted. 

The other characteristic of the pedagogy of the 
Middle Ages, its mania, was the taste or rather pas- 
sion for disputation. Keally independent researches 
being forbidden, discussion, by bringing two different 
and contrary interpretations into opposition, gave both 
scholars and masters at least the shadow of liberty of 
thought. Never has there been such an abuse of 
argumentation; when the sixteenth century brought 
into the world another spirit and better methods, it 
found all the educational institutions transformed into 
fencing schools of dialectics. "They dispute before 
dinner," said Yives,^ in 1531; '^they dispute during 
dinner; they dispute after dinner; they dispute in 
private and in public, at all times and in every place." 
And the same author has given a satirical description 
of these interminable disputes : " Their self-esteem," 
he says, "bound them to get up questions on the sim- 
plest propositions. On the mere words. Scribe milii, 
they put questions of grammar, physics, and meta- 
physics. They gave their adversary no time to ex- 
plain himself. If he entered into any developments, 
they cried, ^ To the point ! to the point ! reply cate- 
gorically ! ' They had no concern for truth, but sought 
merely to defend their opinions. Is a man too hard- 
pressed ? He eludes the objection by force of obsti- 
nacy; he denies insolently; he blindly strikes down 
all opposition in despite of evidence. To the most 
convincing objections, which drive him to the most 
1 Vives, De causis corrux)tarem artium, t. i, p. 345. 



190 ABELARD 

absurd consequences, he contents himself with reply- 
ing: ^I admit it, because it results from my thesis.' . . . 
Provided one can defend himself logically, he passes 
for an able man. The character, not less than the 
intelligence, is ruined by disputation. Men shout 
until they are hoarse ; they make use of insulting 
speeches and threats. They even come to blows, 
bites, and buffetings. Discussions degenerate into 
quarrels, and quarrelling into fighting." 

Perhaps there is some exaggeration in the details of 
this picture, but the background is exact. " What are 
the contests of our savants/^ said a Chancellor of 
Paris, " if not real cock-fights ? . . . One cock struts 
up to another, and bristles his feathers. Our people 
do the same. They have not beaks and spurs like the 
cocks, but their self-conceit is armed with a redoubta- 
ble ergot.'^ ^ The most frequent result of the discus- 
sions was not the elucidation of the questions in dis- 
pute, but the embittering and exasperation of minds. 
Insults, if not blows, were the conchision of many a 
disputation. At Poitiers, in the eighteenth century, 
there were two professors of physics at the College of 
St. Martha, one of whom, following Descartes, taught 
the theory of the plenum, and the other that of the 
vacuum, after Newton. One day their quarrel became 
so furious that the Cartesian, driven to extremes, cried 
out: "The vacuum has no existence except in your 
head ! " {no7i datur vacwim nisi in capite tuo). 

1 Lecoy de la Marche, op. cit., p. 452. According to some authors, 
the French verb ergoter (to cavil) is derived from the ergot (spurs) 
of cocks. But it is more probable that the etymology of this word 
is from the conjunction ergo, with which the disputants prefaced 
the conclusion of their arguments. 



THE FACULTIES OF ARTS 191 

IV 

The Faculties of Arts evidently had a mixed char- 
acter. As schools of high dialectic and philosophy, 
they belonged to what we now call superior instruc- 
tion; but, as schools of grammar and elementary 
acquirements in rhetoric and mathematics, they were 
the doubtful equivalent of that special order of in- 
struction which has been distinguished from all others 
under the title of secondary. It is clear that very 
young students in arts, who being not yet fourteen — 
the minimum age for the determinance — were pre- 
paring for the baccalaureate, could not be considered 
as students of superior instruction. The mixed char- 
acter of the Faculty of Arts, and the resemblance 
between its schools and modern colleges of secondary 
instruction, gradually became more accentuated in the 
later centuries of the Middle Ages, when the Faculty 
was obliged to bring together and unite not only the 
houses of study called colleges, but especially the 
boarding-houses called pedagogies,'^ both of them de- 
pendencies of the university, and in which the 
majority of the students became boarders. 

"In the fifteenth century," says Thurot, '^an impor- 
tant revolution was effected in the discipline of the 
Faculty of Arts. The majority of the students, even 
those whose home was in the city, lived in college dor- 

1 We distinguish between the pedagogies and the colleges, because 
the former were originally grammar schools, while the colleges were 
religious houses intended especially for students in theology ; but 
the distinction soon vanishes, and the word "college" is applied 
to every school where young men were instructed. 



192 ABELARD 

mitories." ^ The revolution signalized by Thurot be- 
gan long before the fifteenth century, since the peda- 
gogies were very numerous at Paris at the close of the 
fourteenth century, while on the other hand, the col- 
lege of the Sorbonne, the first of several similar 
colleges, dates from 1257.^ 

A question of discipline was certainly the chief 
determining cause of this considerable change in the 
primitive regulations of the Faculty of Arts. Given 
the extreme youth of the greater number of students 
in arts, and it is plain enough that it was dangerous 
to leave them as uncontrolled in the street of Paris, 
lodging where they could in the houses of citizens or 
in hotels. To guard them against the perils of liberty, 
put an end to their disorder, and quiet their turbu- 
lence, they were gathered together in boarding-houses 
under the authority of a pedagogue. On the other 
hand, certain colleges owed their origin to generous 
founders, who, to aid poor students, established free 
boarding-houses where they might find food and shel- 
ter. " In the twelfth century, and for a long time 
after," says Crevier, "the colleges were not schools 
where lessons were given to those desirous of learn- 
ing. . . . Their only purpose was to serve as a resi- 
dence for young students under a master who con- 
ducted them to the public schools." ^ 

It now remains to be explained how the pedagogies 
and colleges, which were at first mere boarding-houses 
or asylums, became veritable schools with special mas- 

1 Thurot, op. cit., p. 92. 

2 See uext chapter concerning the foundation of the college of the 
Sorbonne. 3 Crevier, t. i, p. 271. 



THE FACULTIES OF AETS 193 

ters, attractino^, by degrees, nearly all the students of 
the Faculty of Arts, and gradually engrossing instruc- 
. tion, until, in the sixteenth century, the schools in 
the Rue du Fouarre were finally closed, and the col- 
leges absorbed the entire Faculty of Arts.^ 

There were always grammar schools at Paris, and 
grammar then embraced the elements of literature, 
and included the study and explanation of the poets. 
These schools gradually developed until logic was 
almost the only subject left for exclusive treatment 
by the Faculty of Arts. Grrammar schools were neces- 
sary, moreover, to instruct children in reading, writing, 
the elements of grammar, and ordinary rhetoric, that 
is to say, the formulas to be employed in writing a let- 
ter to a bishop or a nobleman ; and also the elements 
of calculation, or what was then called algorism. They 
soon began to teach the first principles of logic in 
these schools, according to the Summulce of Petrus 
Hispanus,^ and thus prepared the scholars, by the 
time they were twelve or thirteen years old, to follow 
the logic courses of the Faculty of Arts. In the 
earliest times the pedagogues, or heads of boarding- 
houses, led their pupils to the schools of the Eue du 
Fouarre. After a while it was found more conven- 
ient to have them instructed inside the houses. The 
pedagogy became a complete and enclosed college. 
The Rue du Fouarre saw the number of its students 

1 At the end of the fifteenth century the colleges and pedagogies 
contained nearly all the students in arts. In 1469 the Faculty of 
Arts had decided not to give certificates of studies except to such 
scholars as resided either in a pedarjogy, a college, with their 
parents, or with some member of the university, whom they served 
gratuitously. 2 gee above, p. 178. 



194 ABELARD 

generally diminish, and ended by being entirely de- 
serted. "In 1460," says Tliurot, "the majority of the 
regents of the Nation of France taught in the board- 
ing-houses. . . . What gave the final blow to public 
instruction was the obligation to reside in the peda- 
gogies and colleges, which was imposed on the masters 
about 1524. It was necessary thereafter to submit 
to this obligation if one aspired to the functions of 
Eector, Procurator of Nations, or Dean of Faculties." 

It was thus that the Faculty of Arts gradually 
became blended with the colleges, of which it was no 
longer, one might say, anything more than tlje feder- 
ation. These colleges had become very numerous: 
there were some fifty of them in the fifteenth century, 
among which, it is true, a certain number were theo- 
logical colleges or religious houses, or else hospitable 
houses opened to foreign students ; for example, the 
Scotch college, founded in 1326, and that of the 
Lombards, in 1334. But many others, such as Har- 
court College (1280) and the famous college of Mon- 
taigu (1314), seem to have been from the outset real 
schools of secondary instruction.^ 

However this may be, the institution of colleges 
at Paris rendered the greatest service to the Faculty 
of Arts. And it is not uninteresting to dwell on the 
meaning of this evolution imposed by the force of 
circumstances on the university of the Middle Ages, 
obliging it to pass from the almost absolute liberty of 
early times to the regime of seclusion and dormitory 

1 See in Vallet de Viriville {op. cit., p. 166) the enumeration of 
the colleges established in Paris before the Revolution. This list 
includes more than eighty establishments. 



THE FACULTIES OF ARTS 195 

life and from the system of public courses to that of 
private classes taught within the colleges. It was 
a preliminary step toward the necessary distinction 
between the student in the school and the student in 
the university; between secondary and superior in- 
struction, between what is suitable for children of 
from twelve to fifteen years, or even above that, and 
students of twenty. Thenceforward there was more 
labor and discipline on the part of the pupils, and 
more regularity and assiduity on the parts of the 
masters. Moreover, the university kept a close watch 
on these establishments incorporated with itself; it 
exacted guarantees from the headmasters or prin- 
cipals who directed them; it obliged its rectors to 
visit them once a year; and, in 1445, it declared 
solemnly that " it existed almost entirely in its col- 
leges, and had been preserved by them alone from 
total destruction during the misfortunes of the wars 
that had afflicted France." ^ 

Bologna also had its colleges; that is, says Savigny, 
its " corporations of poor students supported by a 
founder and living under a common surveillance."^ 
But these colleges, which seem to have been nothing 
more than hospitable houses where foreign students 
installed themselves, had no importance and played 
no part in the constitution of the Italian ^universities. 

It was otherwise in England, where " the collegiate 
system," says Laurie, "so soon dwarfed the univer- 

1 Crevier, t. iv, p. 134. 

2 Savigny, ch. xxi, 71 : for example, the collegium Avenionense, 
founded in 1263, and the Collegium Hispanicum, founded by the 
Popes in 1364. 



196 ABELARD 

sity." ^ Laurie attributes the foundation of colleges 
to the same causes that I have indicated: on one 
hand, the difficulty of lodging a great, number of stu- 
dents conveniently in private houses, and on the 
other, the inconvenience of leaving very young persons 
exposed to the myriad temptations of city life, with- 
out restraint. At first there were "halls," "hostels" 
(Jiospitid), regulated lodging-houses, where the stu- 
dents resided at their own cost, under the supervision 
of a principal appointed by the chancellor.^ At Cam- 
bridge there were the Hospitia artistarum and Hospitia 
juristarum. To the Jiospitia succeeded the colleges; 
that is to say, endowed halls, where the students 
had free quarters, but where they had, in return, to 
submit to the obligations imposed by the college 
statutes. 

"The most important of the early college founda- 
tions of England," says Laurie, " was that of AValter 
de Merton, chancellor of the kingdom, in 1264, called 
' Domus scliolarium de Merton.'' Merton himself must 
have had his eye on the Sorbonne. Merton's house 
was substantially what we should now call a secular 
college. No ^religious person,' that is, no monk or 
friar, was to be admitted. His aim was to produce 
a constant succession of scholars devoted to the 
pursuits of literature."^ 

1 Laurie, op. cit., p. 245. 2 Mullinger, op cit., p. 217. 

3 Laurie, op. cit., p. 252. It was at Merton College that Duns 
Scotius studied, "the subtle doctor" (1275-1305), who entered the 
Franciscan order, and whose disciples were in controversy with the 
Thomists, the Dominicans, disciples of Thomas Aquinas. William 
of Occam, "the prince of Nominalists" (1280-1347), was educated 
at the same college. He taught at Oxford and at Paris. 



THE FACULTIES OF ARTS 197 

Other colleges of Oxford and Cambridge were 
established on the model of Merton: notably, at 
Oxford, University Hall (1280), Exeter College 
(1314), Queen's College (1340), etc.; at Cambridge, 
Clare Hall (1320), Pembroke Hall (1343), Trinity 
Hall (1350), etc.^ In England as in France, the col- 
legiate system replaced the regime of the day school, 
of free and independent life. The colleges of Oxford 
and Cambridge, like those of Paris, became essential 
elements of the university, true centres of education 
and instruction. Doubtless the establishment of col- 
leges had been prepared for, from the beginning 
of the universities, by the two facts : 1st, that stu- 
dents often lodged at the houses of their professors ; 
2d, that in the Faculty of Arts at least (notably at 
Prague) the regents voluntarily gave lessons in their 
own houses ; so that, from these small beginnings, the 
colleges and their classes followed by a natural evo- 
lution. It is none the less true that the face of things 
was changed. The universities had made a great 
experiment in the day school for students of all ages. 
And it must be thoroughly recognized that this ex- 
periment, which people seem to wish to renew in our 
day,^ has failed, since the Middle Ages, as they were 
ending, turned into another path, and even replaced 
by the strictest sort of discipline the liberty of earlier 
days. 

1 See in Vallet de Viriville (op. ciL, pp. 136 and 187), the list of 
colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. 

2 " It is curious to note," says Laurie, " that in these latter days 
the non-collegiate or unattached system of the thirteenth and four- 
teenth centuries has been revived. Undergraduates may now live 
in licensed lodging-houses, and we may yet see restored, both in 
England and in Scotland, the hostels of the Middle Ages." 



198 ABELARD 

On the other hand, the transformation wrought in 
the disciplinary and pedagogic regulations of the 
Faculty of Arts had this necessary consequence : 
that, at least in Paris, this Faculty, thenceforward 
dismembered, as one might say, and whose very 
numerous regents dispersed themselves among divers 
colleges, had no longer more than a nominal unity. 
Finally, its character as a school of preparatory, and, 
to repeat the word, "secondary," instruction, grad- 
ually became more defined so that after the sixteenth 
century the higher movement in literature and science 
was developed apart from it. It retains nothing but 
elementary classical instruction, and that in such 
measure as is permitted it by the constantly increas- 
ing activity of the religious orders, and particularly 
of the Jesuits, thus leaving an open field, in the 
modern universities, to the Faculties of Philosophy, 
Science, and Letters. 



CHAPTER II 
THE FACULTIES OF THEOLOGY 

The Superior Faculties — Primacy of the Faculty of Theology — 
The other arts and sciences assistants of the divine science — The 
Theological Faculty of Paris, the model of all similar Faculties — 
Its authority as a council in the questions of doctrine — Federa- 
tion of convents and colleges — Dominicans and Franciscans — 
Foundation of the college of Sorhonne — II. Books and methods — 
The Bible and the Book of Sentences by Peter Lombard — Expo- 
sition and discussion — Subtilities and cavilling — The geometrical 
method applied to theological subjects — Aridity of this method 
of teaching — Criticisms of Gerson and of Clemengis — Exam- 
ples of the questions debated in the theological schools — Relation 
of theological and philosophical studies. 



Had I followed what might be called the order of 
precedence, it is not with the Faculty of Arts that I 
should have begun my examination of the studies and 
methods of instruction in the universities. In reality 
the Faculty of Arts took the lowest rank, preceded, as 
it was, by the so-called superior Faculties of Theology, 
Law, and Medicine. But the arts serving as a general 
preparation and introduction to the special sciences, 
it was logical and necessary to study in the first place 
the organization of instruction in the Faculty of Arts. 

Among the special sciences, that of theology occu- 
pied the first place, at least in the beginning. The 

199 



200 ABELARD 

Sacra Facultas, as it was called, was considered supe- 
rior to all the others. ^ It could not have been otherwise 
at a time when the Church was still all-powerful, 
when universities were founded under the patronage 
of Popes and had a thoroughly ecclesiastical character, 
and when study in general seemed to have no other 
aim than that of serving religion.^ 

Theology was represented as the first of arts, as the 
supreme science of which the others could not be more 
than the respectful handmaidens. 

"Logic is good," said Jacques de Vitry,^ passing in 
review the seven liberal arts, "for it teaches us to 
distinguish truth from falsehood; grammar is good, 
for it teaches how to speak and write correctly; 
rhetoric is good, for it teaches how to speak elegantly 
and to persuade. Good, too, are geometry, which 
teaches how to measure the earth, the domain of our 
bodies; arithmetic, or the art of computing, which 
enables us to estimate the fewness of our days ; music, 
which reminds us of the sweet chant of the blessed; 
astronomy, which causes us to consider the celestial 
bodies and the stars shining resplendently before God. 
But far better is theology, which alone can be truly 
called a liberal art, since it alone delivers from its 
woes the human soul." The seven arts were thus dis- 
possessed, in favor of theology, of their beautiful 

1 . . . Prseest reliquis sicut superior, said Alexander IV, in a 
Bull of 1256. Chartularium Univ. Paris., t. i, p. 343. 

2 . . . Theologia imperat aliis scientiis, ut doinina, et illss sibi, 
ut famulsB, obseguuntur. Ad hanc singulae in viis suis levant et 
habent intuitum. Chartularium, etc., p. 343. 

3 Jacques de Vitry, a French preacher, died in 1244, cited by 
M. Lecoy de la Marche, op. cit., p. 458. 



THE FACULTIES OF THEOLOGY 201 

qualification of liberal ; and were chiefly appreciated 
and lauded in view of their moral and religious bear- 
ing; that is to say, of the services they might render 
to religion. 

It was at Paris, "the theological university par 
excellence," that theological studies were established 
soonest and most firmly. It was in the image of the 
Faculty of Paris that the Popes successively organized 
other Faculties, some instituted simultaneously with 
the university itself, as in the case of Toulouse, 
Prague, Vienna,^ etc., and others superadded to uni- 
versities that had long been flourishing, like the 
Faculty of Theology at Bologna, created in 1362. 
And if it is exact to say in general, yet without for- 
getting local differences, that instruction in all subjects 
was practically tlie same in all of the universities, 
this observation is specially applicable to instruc- 
tion in theology, which being more directly watched 
over and regulated by the Church, and, by the very 
nature of its object allowing, less latitude than other 
studies, necessarily presented more uniformity and 
repeated itself everywhere under identical conditions. 

What, among other things, demonstrates the pecul- 
iar importance attached to theology, is the fact that 
the study of it was far more prolonged than was the 
case with any other branch of knowledge. One could 
be a master of arts at twenty-one ; a doctor of law or 
of medicine at twenty-six or twenty-seven; but a 
doctorate of theology could not be obtained before 

1 The statutes of the Theological Faculty of Vienna, promulgated 
in 1389, establish a faithful reproduction of the customs followed in 
the Theological Faculty of Paris. 



202 ABELARD 

completing the thirty -fifth year.^ Consequently this 
doctorate was especially appreciated and honored. 
"The qualification of doctor of theology," says Cre- 
vier, "was so highly esteemed at that period " (that 
is to say, in the fourteenth century) " that Po^dc John 
XXII, who did not possess it, feared that use might 
be made of that fact to lessen his authority. ^ 

The importance, of the Theological Faculty of Paris 
did not arise wholly from the fact that it was a teach- 
ing body, conferring degrees much sought after, and 
making doctors such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas 
Aquinas. In reality, it constituted for the Church 
of Kome and for all Christendom a sort of consulting 
committee in ecclesiastical matters ; it was " the per- 
manent council of the Gauls," whose right to give 
doctrinal advice in matters of faith was recognized, 
and which more than once permitted itself to differ in 
opinion with the Popes. ^ King Charles VI, in a 
formal declaration of 1414, set forth that " the mem- 
bers of the Paris Faculty of Theology hold the first 
rank in the science of sacred letters."^ And he 
added: "The people recognize this fact, and the 
Court of Kome has itself admitted it when, on sev- 

1 Robert de Cour^on did not require more than eight years to be 
devoted to theological studies; but the course was prolonged to 
fourteen years at the beginning of the fourteenth century. 

2 Crevier, t. ii, p. 321. 

3 For example, when, in 1331, the Faculty refused to adopt the 
opinions of John XXII, on " the beatific vision of the saints." 
In sending the decision of the Faculty to the Pope, the King of 
France adjoined to it this curious commentary: "Our doctors 
know better what is to be believed in matters of faith than the 
jurists and clerics who compose your Court, and who know little 
or nothing of theology." * Crevier, t. iii, p. 379. 



THE FACULTIES OF THEOLOGY 203 

eral occasions, both former and recent, ambiguity or 
doubt had arisen concerning the doctrines of the 
Christian religion, it has not disdained to address 
itself to the council of the faith residing in Paris in 
order to obtain a clear decision on these points." 

What gave its peculiar force and original character 
to the Theological Faculty of Paris was the fact that 
it was not merely a body of professors : it was, as it 
has been very well defined by Thurot, " a federation 
of religious and secular communities."^ Its roots 
penetrated not solely into the secular colleges, but 
also into the convents of the various religious orders. 
It benefited, in consequence, by whatever there was 
of vitality and power in these church corporations. 

As a rule, both masters and students belonged 
either to the order of St. Dominic, or to one of the 
four mendicant orders — the Franciscans, the Augus- 
tinians, the Jacobins, and the Carmelites — or other 
communities. In the majority of the convents there 
were public chairs of theology, whose incumbents 
were members of the Faculty. In 1253, for instance, 
there were twelve professors of theology,^ nine of 
whom taught in the convents. So, too, the great 
majority of students and aspirants to the baccalaureate 
and the doctorate were members of a religious order. 
Thus, in the fourteenth century, from 1373 to 1398, 
out of one hundred and ninety-two bachelors who 
received the license, one hundred and two belonged 
to mendicant orders. 

1 Thurot, op. cit., p. 132. 

2 In 1207 Innocent III had limited the number of chairs in the 
Theological Faculty of Paris to eight ; but the constantly increasing 
number of students rendered it necessary to establish four more. 



204 ABELARD 

The Dominicans liad obtained authority to establish 
a chair of theology in their convent in 1229; they 
had a second one later on. And their example was 
followed by the other communities. The two greatest 
doctors of the Middle Ages, Albertus Magnus, "the 
universal doctor,"^ and his pupil, Thomas Aquinas, 
" the angel of the schools, " ^ taught in the Domini- 
can convent. In that of the Franciscans taught 
Alexander of Hales, ^ "the irrefragable doctor, 'Svho 
was the master of St. Bonaventure. 

There is no doubt that this participation of the 
religious orders in the teaching of theology called out 
many complaints on the part of the university. " This 
partition is harmful and unjust, " said the masters of 
the university about the year 1250 ; " unjust because 
we are seculars by origin, and the regulars come to 
deprive us of the heritage of our fathers."'' But the 
regulars, being aided by the pontifical power, gained 
the day. The Faculty of Theology remained a collec- 
tive body having its ramifications in all the convents. 
Each newly founded religious order claimed to par- 
ticipate, by means of some of its own members, in 
the university teaching of theology ; and when, in the 
sixteenth century, Loyola created the famous society 

1 Albert the Great (1193-1280) taught at Paris about 1236. Con- 
cerning Albert the Great, see the already cited work of M. 
d'Assaill5^ 

2 Thomas Aquinas (1227-1274) followed his master, Albertus 
Magnus, to Paris, and there expounded the Book of the Sentences 
and Holy Scripture. He was born in Italy. His works have 
been reprinted many times, and comprise more than twenty folio 
volumes. 

3 Alexander of Hales, born in England in 1245. 

4 Crevier, t. i, p. 397. 



THE FACULTIES OF THEOLOGY 205 

whicli was to take so eminent a place in the Catholic 
Church, there were Jesuit professors of theology, at 
least in certain Faculties.^ 

The Faculty of Theology, however, did not depend 
solely on the religious congregations, the solid studies 
pursued within the convents,^ and the masters who 
taught there in the name of the university; it also 
included the theological colleges and secular establish- 
ments. The most celebrated of these is that which 
became famous under the name of "Sorbonne," organ- 
ized in 1257 by Eobert de Sorbon, chaplain to Louis IX. 
"Before Robert de Sorbon," says Crevier, "no college 
for secular students in theology had been established 
at Paris. He wished to procure for them this advan- 
tage, already enjoyed by several of the regulars, and 
he founded a house for sixteen poor students in theol- 
ogy, four from each of the Nations composing the 
university."^ By his letters patent of 1257, Louis 
IX made formal cession to his chaplain of " a house 
situated at Paris in the rue Coupe Gueule, before the 
palace of the Hot Baths of Julian. " * The foundation 
was confirmed in 1259 by a letter from Pope Alexander 
IV. Such were the modest beginnings, under the 
name of the "Congregation of poor masters of the 
Sorbonne," of a building which was to play such a 

1 At Poitiers, for example, in the sixteenth century, the Jesuits 
had two chairs of theology in their college of Ste. Marthe. 

2 On theological studies in the convents, see Thurot, p. 113 et seq. 

3 Crevier, t. i, p. 434. 

4 Chartularium Univ. Paris., t. i, p. 247. The Sorhonne seems 
to have heen the model of Merton College in England. So likewise 
the University Hall, founded at Oxford in 1280, and intended for 
four masters to live together and study theology. 



206 ABELARD 

brilliant part in the future career of the University 
of Paris, and which absorbed the Faculty of Theology, 
whose principal seat it became.-^ They were begin- 
nings, moreover, at which it has never blushed, for 
the Sorbonne was founded, as has been seen, in a 
spirit of charity and benevolence toward the poorest 
students, and to a certain extent, also, in a spirit of 
liberty, by the secular clergy in order to contend 
against the regulars. And might not these seculars 
of the thirteenth century, opposed as they were to 
the invading corporations, be considered as in a sense 
the laity of that age? 

However that may be, the college of the Sorbonne 
soon had its own public courses in theology. Other 
colleges, likewise composed exclusively of theologians, 
were founded between 1250 and 1300.^ Even those 
which had been originally under the control of the 
Faculty of Arts reserved a certain number of places 
for students of theology : among these, the college of 
Navarre, established on the heights of St. Genevieve 
in 1304, took the first rank.^ "The houses of Sor- 
bonne and of Navarre, " says Thurot, " were almost a 
match, by themselves alone, for the religious orders. 
They gave the Faculty of Theology the greater number 
and the most distinguished of its secular masters." 

It was in the convents and colleges, then, that the 

1 Even to-day "the Sorbonne" is a synonym for the group of 
Faculties which are the heirs of the University of Paris. 

2 See Thurot, des Communautes seculieres ou colleges, op. cit, 
p. 122 et seq. 

3 The college of Navarre, founded by Queen Jeanne of Navarre, 
wife of Philip the Fair, was intended to receive seventy poor stu- 
dents, of whom twenty were to be theologians. 



THE FACULTIES OF THEOLOGY 207 

Faculty of Theology had its seat: it was there that 
masters and pupils exercised themselves, the one in 
disputations and in preaching, and the others in 
instruction. From the commencement of the four- 
teenth century, the special activity of the Faculty, 
aside from the studies undertaken and the instruction 
given in the communities, seems to have been visible 
chiefly in the public acts which preceded the bacca- 
laureate and the mastership. "Superintendence of 
these acts became the principal occupation of the 
masters." Instruction was confided almost entirely 
to the bachelors : what proves this is that the reform 
of 1452 consisted in requiring the masters to give a 
lecture once a fortnight. 

II 

One can make short work of naming the books 
taught and studied in the Faculty of Theology: the 
Bible, quite naturally,^ and Peter Lombard's book of 
Sentences. Thence arose the names of Biblici and of 
Sententiarii applied to bachelors in theology accord- 
ing as they were authorized to make their courses 
in the Bible or the Sentences. It is to be noted that 
one was a Biblicus before becoming, three years later, 
a Sententiarius ; thus giving the impression that the 
Bible was easier to explain or of less importance than 
the compilation edited by Peter Lombard. The same 
conviction is evidenced by the fact that the ordinary 
lecture, which was' reserved for the masters, and 

1 The Bible was probably read in the Latin translation made in 
the fourth century by St. Jerome, and called the Vulgate. 



208 ABELAKD 

which according to usage in all the Faculties was 
given before nine o'clock in the morning, also dealt 
with the book of the Sentences. Holy Scripture was 
explained in the extraordinary courses.^ 

What then was this book by Peter Lombard which 
occupied so lofty a position, and was placed on a 
footing of equality, to say the least, with the Bible 
itself ? Simply a collection, a methodical arrange- 
ment of extracts, constituting a complete treatise on 
theology,^ under the form of sentences and maxims; 
or in other words, of thoughts borrowed either from 
the Scriptures or the Fathers of the Church, It was 
divided into four parts. The first treated of God and 
the Trinity ; the second, of the creation, and the rela- 
tions between the visible and the invisible worlds; 
the third, of the redemption, faith, hope, and char- 
ity, the virtues, and sin; the fourth, of the sacra- 
ments. 

It was to this theological manual that the ordinary 
methods of scholastic teaching, exposition, and dis- 
cussion were applied. The regulations of the reform 
of 1366 prescribed to both bachelors and Sententiarii 
the reading of the very text of Peter Lombard, and 
its exposition phrase by phrase. But the method of 
''questions" was chiefly employed: the opinions of 
theologians of recognized authority were pitted against 
each other ; the pros and cons were urged in the form 
of syllogisms. But these premeditated discussions, 
which were in fact mere monologues, since the pro- 

1 Thurot, p. 110. 

2 Crevier is of opinion, however, tliat Lombard "had omitted 
certain very important matters." Crevier, t. i, p. 204. 



THE FACULTIES OF THEOLOGY 209 

fessor did all tlie talking, — making both question 
and answer and defending in turn the two contrary 
opinions before concluding, — had nothing spontane- 
ous about them : as a rule, they were read ; although 
products of the same method as the lectures of Abe- 
lard, they had none of the life and animation which 
characterized the teaching of the great professor of 
the twelfth century. Though the reform of 1366 
prohibited the bachelors, when making their courses, 
from having anything but a notebook to assist their 
memory in recalling the principal divisions, argu- 
ments, and quotations of their lectures, yet they 
none the less persisted in a custom which better 
suited the laziness or the intellectual mediocrity of 
the masters. The bachelors were often observed 
reading argumentations which they had not composed 
themselves.^ 

Crevier has defined theological instruction as a 
whole during the Middle Ages with sufficient clear- 
ness.^ According to him, scholastic theology must 
have had three principal characteristics. First, It re- 
united in one body of doctrine, or one general system, 
all questions relating to religion; such is, in fact, the 
essential merit of the book of the Sentences. Second, 
It treated these questions not by authority alone, but 
in part by reasoning ; on condition, be it understood, 
that the ever-docile reason should submit itself to the 
demonstration of traditional beliefs: as soon as one 

1 At the period of the reform of 1452 the bachelors were author- 
ized to read their lectures, but they were recommended to take 
care that they were composed by themselves. 

2 Crevier, t. i, p. 100 et seq. 



210 ABELARD 

departed from tradition lie was denounced as heretical 
and counted as naught. In 1248 propositions like 
the following were everywhere esteemed erroneous 
and heretical: *' There are many eternal verities 
which are not God." "He whose natural dispositions 
are greater, will have a greater share of grace." 
Finally, it employed " the geometrical style, " and pro- 
ceeded by axioms, theorems, and corollaries. Founded 
on revealed truth, on dogmas whose authority nobody 
then dreamed of contesting, theology could, in fact, 
like geometry, which rests upon self-evident princi- 
ples, be built up entirely by pure deduction and rest 
on syllogisms. No appeal was made to feeling in 
teaching religion; just as no appeal was made to 
experience in teaching philosophy. There being no 
criterion of truth but the agreement between conse- 
quences and principles admitted as beyond discussion, 
there resulted an apparently rigorous body of instruc- 
tion, solid in proportion as the bases of its perpetual 
reasoning were solid, but desperately dry, and as cold 
as geometry. 

Even contemporaries — for example, Gerson ^ — were 
under no illusions regarding the defects of such a 
method. They reproached it for insisting compla- 
cently on useless questions while neglecting essential 
points of doctrine; for plunging into vain curiosi- 
ties, and, as Crevier says, " into dialectical bickerings 
and metaphysical abstractions." ^ Lost in the mirage 
of their subtile discussions, these logicians of theology 
forgot the art of preaching; they could no longer 

1 Gerson, Contra vanam curio sitatem in negotio fidei. 

2 Crevier, t. iii, p. 182. 



THE FACULTIES OF THEOLOGY 211 

speak to the heart, move souls, or communicate faith ; 
they knew nothing save how to argue, distinguish 
and conclude. On the other hand, they plunged into 
vain and sometimes ridiculous researches, and. Popes 
themselves, — as for instance, Clement VII, — treated 
them as ^^visionaries." ^ In theology as in philoso- 
phy, life drew further and further apart from this 
tiresome accumulation of syllogisms; reality escaped 
from these refined abstractions ; and the sterile effort 
of theological dialectic no more resulted in assuring 
the progress of faith and practical devotion, than the 
subtleties of philosophy assisted in arriving at a 
single new scientific fact. "The acute argumenta- 
tion of our theologians," said Clemengis,^ "have at 
first glance something shrewd and ingenious about 
them; but if you cast away the husk and envelope of 
the words and try to find the fruit, they vanish into 
smoke, because they are empty within." 

Let me cite some examples of the theological prob- 
lems to which grave doctors consecrated all the re- 
sources of their logic. "In order to convince the 
least instructed," says an author, who is nevertheless 
very catholic, M. d'Assailly,^ " one must choose among 
a thousand such, certain of these inane questions 
which then had the run of the schools, and whose 
solution it is, I think, superfluous to indicate." — 
"What is the interior structure of Paradise?" — "Is 
the body of our Saviour Jesus Christ clothed in the 
Eucharist? " — " Is the water changed into wine before 

1 Ibid., p. 186. 

2 Ibid., p. 180. Clemengis died in 1435. He was rector of the 
University of Paris, and director of the College of Navarre. 

3 0. d'Assailly, Albert le Grand, Paris, 1870, p. 175, 



212 ABELARD 

suffering, with the wine, the encharistic transforma- 
tion?" — "Is it of the divine essence to engender or 
to be engendered?" — "What do the angels do with 
the bodies of which they have made iise to fulfil a 
mission upon earth?" — "What was the color of the 
Virgin's skin? " — " Utvum beatissima Virgo in concep- 
tione hdbuerit doloremvel aliqiiam deledationemf . . . " 
Observe that these follies are quoted, not from some 
obscure theologian, but from the Summa of Albertus 
Magnus. 

The theology of the Middle Ages had, nevertheless, 
one merit; namely, that it was always associated, at 
least by its most famous representatives, with philo- 
sophic studies.^ Was not Albertus Magnus nicknamed 
" the ape of Aristotle " because, like his disciple, 
Thomas Aquinas, he had ardently studied and para- 
phrased the Greek philosopher?^ If the philosophy 
of that age was generally religious, and could be de- 
fined as intellectus qumrens fidem, theology, on the 
other hand, was thoroughly impregnated with philos- 
ophy and found its motto in the inverse formula, j^des 
qucerens intellecium. In the book of the Sentences 
the portion commented on with the greatest care and 
insistence was the first part, the most metaphysical, 
the most philosophical division of the whole, since it 
treated of God, the principle of all things. 

But from this very tendency to philosophize, or, at 

1 " It was at that time impossible to study theology without 
knowing logic thoroughly," says Thurot, "It ensued that the 
students were prepared for theology by instruction in logic and 
philosophy." 

2 " Albertus Magnus," Renan has said, "was a paraphrasist, 
Thomas Aquinas, a commentator of Aristotle " (Averrocs, p. 188). 



THE FACULTIES OF THEOLOGY 213 

any rate to reason, proceeded the incurable evil of this 
prolix and babbling theology whose travail brought 
forth all that litter of dissertations, that mass of 
huge volumes now forgotten and hidden in the dust 
of libraries. Commentaries were piled on commen- 
taries until in the end the sacred texts were lost sight 
of; no one went back any longer to the source, and 
when the sixteenth century arrived, the theologians of 
the Eeformation found the Bible again with the same 
astonishment, the same enthusiasm, as the humanists 
of the Renaissance rediscovered Homer and Vergil. 
And it is permissible to agree with the judgment 
passed on scholastic theology in the fourteenth cen- 
tury by the very irreverent Petrarch, — Petrarch, the 
first of modern men, — when he wrote to a friend in 
one of his familiar letters : " Look at these men who 
spend their whole life in altercations, sophistical 
subtleties, in incessantly turning their brains upside 
down in order to solve empty little questions; and 
accept as true my prophecy concerning their future : 
their reputation will pass away with their existence, 
and the same sepulchre will suffice to enshroud their 
names and their bones " (unum sepukhrum nominibus 
\ue eorum sufficiet). 



CHAPTER III 

THE FACULTIES OF CIVIL AND CANON LAW 

The University of Bologna, tlie first centre of legal studies 

— The civil and canon law — Success of these studies in spite of 
ecclesiastical opposition — Reason and consequence of this suc- 
cess — The Popes themselves patronize the universities of law 

— II. Irnerius and Abelard — The Pandects of Justinian — 
Knowledge of the Roman law conserved by the clergy — The 
disciples of Irnerius — Vacarius and Placentinus — Accursius 
and Bartola — The method of Irnerius — The glossse and thp 
summse — III. Order of the lessons — Rules followed in Mont- 
pellier, in Toulouse — Enumeration of the books interpreted — 
The corpus juris of Justinian — The common law — Minute 
enumeration of obligatory tasks imposed — Ordinary and ex- 
traordinary books — Oral teaching — The repetitions — The dis- 
putations — Duration of the studies — IV. The canon law — 
Faculties of decretal — The Decretmn of Gratian — Other books 

— Conclusion. 



If it is in the University of Paris that one should 
study the teaching of arts and theology, because it 
was especially in Paris that these branches were held 
in honor, it is to the University of Bologna, and also 
to the provincial universities of France, Orleans, Tou- 
louse, and notably Montpellier, that one must go to 
seek, in the Middle Ages, teaching of .law that is 
really important and flourishing. 

Law, in those times, signified, on the one hand, civil 
or secular law, inherited from the Eomans, and chiefly 
214 



I'ACIJLTIES OF CIVIL AND CANON LAW 216 

determined by tlie Justinian Code ; and, on the other 
hand, canon or ecclesiastical law, as established by 
the decisions of councils and the decrees of Popes. 
Thence ensued two orders of instruction, two Facul- 
ties, often blended into one : the majority of the uni- 
versities teaching canon law and civil law at the same 
time and constituting what might be called mixed 
Faculties, where one became, according to the expres- 
sion then in use, doctor in utroque jure. We hardly 
find anywhere except at Paris, — where it had been 
established in consequence of the provision forbidding 
the teaching of civil law, pronounced by the Popes in 
the first years of the thirteenth century, — a special 
Faculty of Canon Law, or Faculty of Decretal. But 
everywhere else legal instruction was twofold in char- 
acter, and in certain centres of study, Orleans for 
example, the university was nothing but a university 
of law: it had no other chairs. 

There is nothing to surprise us in the fact that the 
studies which formed men of business, and prepared 
wise counsellors and skilful jurists for the service 
of kings and popes, were held in high regard thus 
early. Even though these were studies which, in a 
word, already seemed the most necessary from the 
utilitarian and practical point of view, since they 
afforded the means of regulating those material inter- 
ests which the Middle Ages, in spite of the reputation 
they have gained for idealism, neither disdained nor 
neglected. 1 Thus M. Fournier is able to say, doubt- 

1 The members of the Faculties of Arts, however, did not at first 
evince much sympathy for the science of law, which they regarded 
as a trade rather than an art. 



216 ABELARD 

less with some exaggeratiouj that ^'all the vitality 
of the ancient provincial universities depended on the 
teaching of law and the Faculty of Law.'' ^ Although 
this statement is not absolutely exact, since, to cite 
no other instance, the considerable development of 
medical studies at Montpellier gives it a formal con- 
traction, it is certain that the study of law did not 
merely flourish in the Middle Ages with a special 
brilliancy, testified to by the celebrated names of 
Irnerius, Accursius, and Bartola, but that, concur- 
rently with theology, it was sometimes prejudicial to 
other studies, and especially so to pure science and 
letters. This is what Crevier affirms, when, in defin- 
ing the condition of studies at the close of the four- 
teenth century, he says: "Theology and canon law 
afforded a short and secure way of arriving at eccle- 
siastical dignities. Hence students, as soon as they 
had acquired a moderate provision of grammar and 
logic, devoted themselves to these sciences, so useful 
to success ; while the arts, which could merely adorn 
the mind, were abandoned."^ 

Instruction in Roman law, however, did not succeed 
in gaining and keeping a foothold in the schools and 
universities of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries 
without a struggle. It is indubitable that the Church 
at first beheld with anxiety and suspicion the develop- 
ment of those studies in civil law which she was later 
on to patronize and protect. There was a moment 
when the civil lawyer was considered the enemy of 
God; and John of Salisbury relates that several of 
his contemporaries burned and destroyed such manu- 

1 Fonrnier, op. cit., t. i, Preface, p. viii. ^ Crevier, t. iii, p. 190. 



FACULTIES OF CIVIL AND CANON LAW 217 

scripts of civil law as fell into their liands. The same 
conservative and traditional spirit which opposed the 
introduction of Aristotle's works on physics in the 
Faculty of Arts, was still more bound to resist 
the progress of civil law, considered as the rival of 
ecclesiastical law. In the twelfth century the coun- 
cils of Lateran (1139) and of Tours (1163) forbade 
members of religious orders to study civil law. St. 
Bernard complained bitterly of the ardor with which 
the clergy threw themselves into legal studies. In 
1220, a Bull of Pope Honorius III prohibited the 
teaching of civil law at Paris and the neighboring 
cities.^ In 1254, Innocent TV extended the same 
prohibition against Eoman law for all France.^ 

It is interesting to note the reasons urged by the 
popes in justification of this prohibition. That to 
which they chiefly appealed was the fact that the 
study of civil law was prejudicial to the science which 
they naturally ranked above all others, namely, the- 
ology.^ But they advanced other considerations: in 
the first place, the pretended inutility of this study. 
"Although Holy Church," said Honorius III, "does 
not reject the docile co-operation (famulatum) of the 
secular laws, yet, as in France and other provinces, 
the laity do not use the laws of the Koman Emperors ; ^ 
and as, moreover, ecclesiastical suits are seldom met 
with which may not be settled by the rules of canon 
law alone, we forbid, under pain of excommunication, 
both at Paris and the neighboring towns and cities, 

1 Chartularium Univ. Paris., t. i, p. 92. 2 ii)ici., p. 261. 

3 "We desire," said the Pope, ^' ut jjlenius et perfectius studio 
theologix insectatur vel saltern philosophise disciplinsB." 
* Allusion to countries governed by common law. 



218 ABELARD 

any person to employ himself in teaching or learning 
civil law." 

It appears, moreover, that the Sovereign Pontiffs 
had been shocked by the luxurious habits and osten- 
tation of the professors of law, who were richer than 
their colleagues of the other Faculties, in consequence 
of the profits derived from their pleadings and con- 
sultations. Nothing can be more significant on this 
head than the following passage from the bull of 
Honorius III : " We have learned with sorrow that, 
abandoning the study of philosophy, to say nothing 
of that of theology, the majority of the clergy hasten 
to the lectures on secular law ; and that, in the major- 
ity of states, no one is chosen by the bishops to occupy 
positions of dignity and honor, or ecclesiastical pre- 
bends, unless he is either a professor of civil law or 
an advocate. ..." Then follows a delineation of 
the privations imposed on themselves, per contra, in 
their modest way of life, by the nurslings of philoso- 
phy {alumni ^ihilosophim) ; " while our advocates, or 
say rather our devils (advocati nostri, immo diaboli), 
covered with purple, mounted on richly caparisoned 
horses, in the glitter of gold, the whiteness of silver, 
the splendor of precious stones, their royal vestments 
reflecting the sj)lendors of the astonished sun (stu- 
pentem reverberantes solem), make ostentatious display 
and give rise to scandal everywhere." And the Pope 
concludes by forbidding the bishops to consider the 
title of professor of laws a sufficient recommendation 
for ecclesiastical preferment, and by formally prohib- 
iting " in France, England, Scotland, Flanders, Spain, 
and Hungary" all teaching of civil law. It is true 



FACULTIES OF CIVIL AND CANON LAW 219 

that, himself mistrusting the results of this prohibi- 
tiorij the Pope added, " If, however, the heads of the 
State permit" (si tamen hoc de regum et principiim 
processerit voluntate). 

Is it by reason of this restriction, which reserved the 
rights of emperors and kings, that civil law, in spite 
of the threats of excommunication, became common in 
all the universities? It is permissible to think so, 
since the study of law could alone guarantee to the 
temporal sovereigns capable ministers, such -as that 
William of Nogaret, professor of law at Montpellier, 
who was of such great assistance to Philip the Fair in 
his quarrels with Boniface VIII. In any case, the 
organization in the vicinity of Paris of the University 
of Orleans is proof enough that the Popes were not 
obeyed.^ It is manifest that the bishops themselves 
were not rigorous toward the jurists very long. In 
the middle of the thirteenth century, Eoger Bacon 
points out the progress of civil law, and what he calls 
" the abuse of it that has been made in Italy. " ^ And 
he adds: "The jurists have acquired such influence 
over the minds of prelates and princes that they mo- 
nopolize all places and favors at their disposal, so much 
so that students of philosophy and theology remain 
empty handed, no longer having the wherewithal to 
live, to buy books, devote themselves to research, 
or experiment on the secrets of science. Even the 
jurists who study canon law only have not the nec- 
essary resources for life and study unless they have at 

1 "The Popes were greatly respected in the Middle Ages," says 
Thurot, " but their decisions were executed only in so far as people 
chose." 

2 Roger Bacon, Compendium Philosophise, ch. iv. 



220 ABELARD 

the same time acquired a knowledge of civil law. . . . 
The civil lawyers alone are honored and enriched."^ 

Even the favor of Popes was not always refused to 
civil law. Thus, Clement V, who had himself studied 
law in the schools of Orleans, formally consecrated, 
by his Bull of 1306, the legal instruction of that 
university.^ It is true that Clement V was no other 
than that famous Bertrand de Goth who, having 
become pope through the protection of Philip the 
Fair, seems to have ascended the pontifical throne 
only to make himself the tool of the King of France. 
"Let none wonder," said he concerning the jurists of 
Orleans, " that the sun glistens on their golden buck- 
lers, for they are the defenders of the country; they 
disentangle rights from the midst of the most hidden 
facts; they re-establish the rights of every man and 
come to the aid of the human race; thus meriting 
by the results of their science as much as if they had 
saved the country by waunds received in combat." 
What a contrast with the language employed a hun- 
dred years earlier by the predecessors of Clement V ! 
All the Avignon Popes, moreover, followed the exam- 
ple of Clement V and showed themselves so favorable 
to civil law that no further opposition was made to 
the progress of legal study. 

1 Another writer of that age (cited by Mullinger, op. cit., p. 211) 
claims, on the contrary, that the study of canon law also led to riches 
and preferment. But he agrees with Roger Bacon in affirming that 
theology was abandoned and that the mass of students adhered to 
the study of law. 

2 Fournier, t. i, p. 11. "The studies of canon and of civil law," 
said the Pope, " have always been held in honor at Orleans: they 
shall flourish there anew by the help of God." 



FACULTIES OF CIVIL AND CANON LAW 221 

It will have been observed that, in the passage 
already cited from the Bull of Honorius III, the Pope 
alluded to the common law countries where Eoman law 
was not in use ; for instance, the northern and central 
provinces of France. There, assuredly, was a diffi- 
culty, a local obstacle to the development of the study 
of Eoman law. But attention has been drawn by 
others to the fact that " in France had been carried on 
a preservation of old customs which, though not less 
varied than the feudal divisions, preserved the method 
and frequently even the stipulations of the Eoman 
law. If the Popes, who protected their canons, made 
opposition to Eoman law, the kings of France were 
favorable to the study of it. St. Louis caused the 
works of Justinian to be translated."^ The Eoman 
laws, then, were interesting things to know, even in 
the common law regions ; and elsewhere — for exam- 
ple, in the south of France — they were the common 
laAV of the land. 

I shall end these general considerations by pointing 
out that the study of civil law was one of the forces 
which contributed most toward the emancipation of 
the universities, toward freeing' them from ecclesiasti- 
cal dependence, and preparing for and introducing 
therein the lay spirit. This progress was chiefly due 
to the very character of that instruction which, treat- 
ing exclusively of human affairs and temporal inter- 
ests, directed the thoughts of those who pursued it, 

1 V. Leclerc, Etat des Lettres au XII^ Steele, p. 510. Compare 
Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, vol. xxviii, ch. xlii; "Philip the 
Fair caused the laws of Justinian to be taught simply as written 
reason in those regions of France which were governed by custom." 



222 ABELARD 

either as students or masters, toward the things of this 
world. But account must also be made of the special 
fact that the study of law made its adepts wealthy ; so 
that the jurists gradually renounced the austere life 
imposed by their poverty on other members of the uni- 
versity. From the thirteenth century, according to 
the testimony of Roger Bacon, the professors of law at 
Bologna married, organized their households according 
to the fashions of the period, and adopted the same 
mode of life as the laity. 

II 

It was from Italy, and above all from Bologna, that 
great intellectual centre both of canon and of Roman 
law, that the first impulse to legal study came. 
Irnerius, who taught at Bologna in the first half 
of the twelfth century, was the renovator of legal 
study, and he is entitled by that fact to a place 
analogous to that we have assigned to Abelard among 
the founders of universities.^ 

He had himself studied in the schools of Constanti- 
nople, and this earliest Renaissance, like the Renais- 
sance of the sixteenth century, seems to have been in 
part, at least, a ray from the science of the Orient, 
illumining Italy in the first place, and then stealing 
gradually over the other countries of Western Europe. 
An accident, a fortunate find, contributed to the resto- 
ration of Roman law. In 1135 or 1137, at the sacking 
of the little town of Amalfi, some one laid hands on 

1 Irnerius, whom Crevier styles "the German Irnerius," seems, 
nevertheless, to have been born in Italy, at Milan or Bologna. 



FACULTIES OF CIVIL AND CANON LAW 223 

a copy of the Pandects of Justinian. Irnerius was 
charged with, the revision of the text, and it was prob- 
ably at this period that he was commissioned by the 
Emperor Lothair II to teach law in the University 
of Bologna. 

It must not be imagined, however, as has been mis- 
takenly done by Montesquieu,^ that the petty fact of 
discovering the lost text of the Pandects was like a 
resurrection, "a second birth," for Eoman law, and 
that, swept away by the fall of the Western Empire, 
hidden for six hundred years, the Justinian law was 
picked up by chance in the twelfth century. As a 
matter of fact, the study of Koman law had never 
been completely abandoned, even during the darkest 
period of the ignorance of the Middle Ages. The 
learned had always known of the Theodosian Code. 
The Code and the Constitutions of Justinian were 
studied before the finding of the Pandects. And 
Savigny has forcibly demonstrated, in a chapter en- 
titled "The Eoman law preserved by the clergy," 
that there had never been a complete interruption in 
the study of it. Irnerius merely resumed the study 
of civil law, and gave it prominence by the public 
character of his lectures and the novelty of his 
method. 

It was the pupils of Irnerius who spread a taste for 
the same studies throughout the other schools of 
Europe. As early as 1149, one of his disciples, 
Vacarius, carried the laws of Justinian to England 
and taught in the Oxford schools.^ So, too, the law 

1 Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, vol. xxviii, cli. xlii. 

2 It is interesting to note that in England, contrary to what 



224 ABELARD 

university of Montpellier sprang directly from the 
University of Bologna. The Italian Placentin, born 
at Plaisance, after having taught at Bologna and 
Mantua, established himself at Montpellier about 
1160 or 1180.^ He was, say the chronicles of the 
time, the first who read at Montpellier. ^ Another 
Bolognese professor, Azo, likewise emigrated to 
Montpellier, and it is related that many Italian 
students followed him thither. 

Montpellier was not the only place in France to 
profit by the intellectual movement which had its 
starting-point at Bologna. "Our Frenchmen," says 
Crevier, "went to Bologna to gain a knowledge of 
Justinian law, and brought it back from there to 
Angers, Orleans, and Paris." ^ The statutes drawn 
up in 1306, by Pope Clement V, to regulate the order 
of the lectures of the professors of law at the Uni- 
versity of Orleans, indorse the divisions, the puncta 
taxata, followed in their instructions by the doctors 
of Bologna.'* 

Bolognese jurists went all over Europe. In 1348, 
a professor from Bologna was smnmoned by Charles 
IV to the University of Prague. Others went to 
Spain. But it was in Italy especially that the dis- 
ciples of Irnerius propagated the science and methods 
of their master, and contributed to the formation of a 

occurred elsewhere, the clergy favored the study of Roman law, 
while the civil power rejected it. It was King Stephen who for- 
bade the lectures of Vacarius. 

1 Placentin, after a first' journey to France, returned to Italy; 
but he went back again to Montpellier, where he died, February 12, 
1192. 2 A. Germain, op. cit., p. 6. 

3 Crevier, t. i, p. 246. ^ M. Fournier, t. i, p. 28. 



FACULTIES OF CIVIL AND CANON LAW 225 

great number of universities, nearly all of them 
organized on the pattern of the University of Bologna. 

Bologna maintained its precedence, none the less, 
under the successors of Irnerius. It was at Bologna 
that Accursius taught (1182-1260), who became in 
his turn the chief of a school, and was surnamed " the 
idol of jurisconsults." Irnerius had been called "the 
light of the law." At Bologna, likewise, the famous 
Bartola studied and received his doctorate (1313- 
1356); he was, after Accursius, the guide of the 
Eoman lawyers of that time, and taught at Pisa and 
Perugia. Bartola instituted a new method, more 
general than that of his predecessors : instead of con- 
fining himself to comments on matters of detail, he 
constructed theories. His authority lasted until the 
sixteenth century, when Alciat in Italy and Cujas in 
France replaced him in the direction and general 
inspiration of legal studies. 

What was the method of Irnerius, the dominating 
method of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries? It 
consisted, essentially, in submitting the legal texts to 
very nearly the same laborious explanation and per- 
petual commentary to which the contemporary profes- 
sors of logic and philosophy subjected the texts of 
Aristotle. All obscure terms and vague phrases were 
interpreted. Marginal notes and interlineations were 
added to the text. Thence came the name of glossar- 
ists, makers of glosse es (glossce, obscure words), applied 
to Irnerius.^ Another process, dear to Irnerius, was 

1 See Savigny, op. cit., ch. xxiii, Les glossateurs consideres comme 
pro/esseurs. 



226 ABELARD 

that of summaries, of resumes. '^ His pupil, Placentin, 
wrote the Sum of the Code, the Sum of the Institutes^ 
etc. Doubtless in these earliest studies of civil law 
in the Middle Ages one discerns no original effort to 
return to the philosophic sources of laws, or to rise, 
through comparison of civil and natural law, to new 
conceptions ; but there is, at all events, an interesting 
and exhaustive work of patient and minute interpreta- 
tion. The sometimes grotesque, but sometimes pene- 
trating explanations of Irnerius prepared the way for 
the more certain and complete interpretations given 
afterwards by Alciat and Cujas, whose originality con- 
sisted chiefly in making an appeal to ancient history 
and literature, and all other aids to interpretation in 
making their explanations of legal texts. The gravest 
reproach which can be brought against the school of 
Irnerius is that, by a phenomenon analogous to that 
which occurred in the scholastic study of philosophy, 
where the commentators gradually superseded the 
author and the text of Aristotle disappeared under the 
paraphrases of his interpreters, so in the study of law 
men attached themselves with servility to the gloss 
which came to have greater authority than the text 
itself. 2 

1 " The professor began his course by giving the resume or 
entire title (swmma)." 

2 E. Petit, professor of the Faculty of Law of Poitiers, Traite 
elementaire du droit romain. Paris, 1892. 



FACULTIES OF CIVIL AND CANON LAW 227 

III 

Eestricting ourselves in the first place to civil law, 
let us try to form an idea of tlie order of lectures and 
exercises in the Faculties of Law during the Middle 
Ages. For the details I shall go back to the very 
text of the various regulations published, notably to 
the statutes established 1339 for the University of 
Montpellier, and, shortly before that, in the first 
years of the fourteenth century, for that of Toulouse.^ 

The Faculty of Civil Law, like the Faculty of Arts, 
had its " ordinary " and its " extraordinary '' lessons : 
the latter appear to have been intended to complete 
the regular instruction, which was devoted to funda- 
mental questions. The ordinary lectures were abso- 
lutely obligatory; it seems that the extraordinary 
courses were optional up to a certain point. Only 
the ordinary lectures, says Savigny, were attended 
by all the students. A simple bachelor might give 
extraordinary lectures, while the other courses were 
reserved to licentiates or doctors. At Montpellier, 
each lecture occupied an hour, and there were four 
every day; at Bologna, an hour and a half or two 
hours. The first began at six in the morning ^ (Jiord 

1 M. Fournier, op. cit., t. ii, p. 44, and t. i, p. 452. The statutes 
of 1339 were drawn up by Cardinal Bertrand, in the name of Pope 
Benedict XII. The statutes of Toulouse had been drawn up, accord- 
ing to M. Fournier, between 1280 and 1320. Pere Denifle thinks 
they date from the second half of the fourteenth century. See on 
this subject the articles M. Fournier has just published in the 
Revue Internationale de V enseignement superieur (February 15, 
March 1, March 15, 1892) : U organisation de V enseignement du 
droit dans VUniversite de Montpellier. 

2 At Bologna this course was to begin, at latest, when the Angelus 



228 ABELARD 

primd matutind) ; the second at nine (ho7'd tertid) ; the 
third at three (Jiord iiond) ; and the last at five (liord 
vesperarum) . The morning lectnre was the essential 
one, the one called ordinary. At Montpellier and 
Bologna, these lectures began on October 19, and 
ended on September 29. The other courses were 
called extraordinary. At Montpellier, the evening 
courses were given by doctors or licentiates; those 
at nine in the morning and three in the afternoon 
by bachelors. Punctuality was rigidly demanded, at 
least by the regulations. At Bologna, a professor 
who was tardy in beginning his lesson had to pay a 
fine of twenty sous. The number of masters varied 
greatly. We find only two in the University of 
Poitiers (where there were also two professors of 
canon law) ; a third professor of civil law was insti- 
tuted in the seventeenth century, at the time of the 
reform of 1679. At Orleans, Bimbenet speaks of ten 
professors. At Bologna, according to the statutes of 
1397, the college of civil lawyers numbered sixteen 
ordinary members ; and that of the canonists twelve, 
plus a certain number of professors supranumerarii et 
extraordinarii. This number appears considerable, 
especially when one recalls that at Bologna, as else- 
where, students and bachelors also took part in the 
instruction and had the right to lecture. 

The books explained in the ordinary and extraor- 
dinary courses were the different works of the corpus 
juris of Justinian : the Codex ^ in the first place ; then 

was rung at the Cathedral. At Poitiers, in the sixteenth century, 
there was a course at five o'clock in the morning. 
^ The Codex of Justinian dates from 529. 



FACULTIES OF CIVIL AND CANON LAW 229 

the Digestum Vetus, the Infortiatum, the Digestum 
Novum, in other words, the three parts which the 
glossarists, the Irnerians, had distinguished as the 
Pandects or the Digest, the Institutes,^ iYiQ Authenticum 
or the Authentica; that is to say, extracts from the 
Novellm Constitutinas ; ^ and, finally, what were called 
the Tres lihri, a collection composed of books 10, 11, 
and 12 of the Codex. 

Nearly all the sources of Eoman law, then, were 
within the reach of the students. But was the study 
of common law, of modern law, completely forgotten 
by these Faculties which seem to have been chiefly 
a revival of the law schools of the Western Empire? 
No; since we find in the list of classic authors of 
the school of Montpellier, a book wholly unknown to 
Koman law, the Usus feudorum, that is, a collection 
of feudal laws. So too, at Bologna, the study of the 
Constitutiones of Frederick I, of Frederick II, and of 
Conrad, were gradually introduced.^ 

I shall not reproduce in all their details the very 
precise indications afforded by contemporary docu- 
ments concerning the distribution of matters taught 
in the different courses. The statutes of Montpellier, 
like those of Bologna and Toulouse, determine with 
minute precision and tyrannous severity what works 
and what divisions of works shall be studied in both 
the ordinary and the extraordinary courses. They fix 

1 The Institutes {institutiones) date from 533, the same year as 
the Digest. 

2 novelise constitutiones, collection of the last constitutions by 
which Justinian had modified certain dispositions of his Code of 
529, and which -were not published until after his death. Each 
Novelle belonging to the Authenticum was called Authentica. 

3 Savigny, ch. xxi, 194. 



230 ABELARD 

the number of lectures to be devoted to each, subject 
of instruction. Thus, at Toulouse, the first book of 
the Digestum Vetus was to be read in thirteen days ; 
the second, in twenty days; the third, in eighteen 
days, etc. The classic works were distinguished into 
ordinary and extraordinary books; the first were the 
Digestum Vetus and the Codex, reserved for the ordi- 
nary courses; but extraordinary courses might be 
given even on the ordinary books. Another distinc- 
tion, which we find at Montpellier, if not at Bologna, 
consisted in dividing the books into two parts; the 
extraordinary books themselves comprised a pars ordi- 
naria and a pars extraordinaria, confided to different 
professors.^ At Toulouse and at Orleans it was only 
the ordinary books which were divided into two parts, 
each pars having the same importance. The regula- 
tions went still farther and put the professors under 
very close restrictions ; the points (puncta taxata) at 
which they were to stop their explanations were de- 
termined for them in advance. " The taxatio puncto- 
rum," says M. Fournier, "introduced into each part 
a new division, the object of which was to oblige the 
professors to teach a certain quantity of matters in a 
given time." This taxatio varied in each university. 
In general, the punctum comprised what the professor 
could read in the space of fourteen days of lectures 
(dies legiUles), It is easy to see that this taxatio 
punctorum had been devised in order to obviate the 

1 M. Fournier calls attention to the fact that at Montpellier the 
tendency was to abandon the traditional distinction of ordinary 
and extraordinary books, and to adopt another which, in all books, 
distinguished an ordinary part and an extraordinary part. 



FACULTIES OF CIVIL AND CANON LAW 231 

caprices or the negligence of masters.^ By thus 
binding them down to a far too rigid programme, 
assurance was at least gained that the programme 
would be accomplished. Great importance was at- 
tached to the observance of these rules. Professors 
were obliged to take the following oath: "I swear 
to read, and to finish reading, within the times fixed 
by the statutes, the books or parts of books which 
have been assigned for my lectures." ^ Severe penal- 
ties were inflicted on those who had not finished their 
courses at the prescribed time. It is evident that no 
freedom was left to the professors of those days. One 
of the vices common to the instruction of the Middle 
Ages under all its forms, was that of subjecting the 
masters to rules too minute, too imperative, in such 
a way as to prevent all originality and engender a 
merely routine compliance with them. On the other 
hand, it must be acknowledged that the method pur- 
sued secured great order and regularity; it permitted 
no gaps in the instruction.^ 

What methods were followed? "Sometimes," says 
Savigny, "the professors spoke extemporaneously and 
sometimes they read. Among the courses that have 
been preserved to us, there are certainly some that 
were improvised; thus, in those of Odofredus,* the 
vivacity and familiarity, but also the carelessness, of 
oral instruction are recognizable."^ In any case the 

1 It seems that the ordinary courses only were subject to the 
obligation of the puncta taxata. 

2 M. Fournier, t. i, p. 63. 

^ Lihros suos legentin ordine, sine saltu. 

4 Odofredus taught with distinction in Bologna sometime after 
Irnerius. 5 Savigny, ch. xxiii, 204. 



232 ABELARD 

instruction was always oral; tlie professors were for- 
bidden to show their notes to the students or to allow 
them to read the notes. One detail which proves 
that the courses were not so monotonous as one might 
be tempted to believe, is that the students might in- 
terrupt the professors and ask them questions, a cus- 
tom much followed in the evening courses, which thus 
became conferences rather than exclusively didactic 
lectures. Another useful practice was that of repeti- 
tions (repetitiones) ^ "We ordain," said the statutes 
of Montpellier, " that all the professors (ordinarii vel 
extraordinarii) be bound to hold a repetition at least 
three times a year (ter repetere in omni anno).^' At 
Bologna, likewise, there were repetitiones, to which 
the professor frequently relegated the examination 
of the questiones; that is, of the real or imaginary 
lawsuits which might be decided by the legal point 
examined in the course.^ 

Finally, the disputatio, the argumentation, that 
favorite exercise of the Middle Ages, also had its 
place in the Faculties of Law. "The argumenta- 
tions," says Savigny, "could only be participated in 
by doctors, or by students aspiring to a salaried chair. 
All the bachelors might be present at the disputations, 

^ "A repetition," says Savigny, "was the detailed exx)lauation 
of a text, witli the solution of all difficulties and the reply to all 
objections that it might raise." 

2 " The same usage existed everywhere. The statutes of 1303 of 
the University of Avignon, said : ' The ordinary doctors of civil 
and of canon law shall make a formal repetition two months after 
the commencement of the course'" (Fournier, § 11, p. 313). The 
repetitions were sometimes entrusted to the doctors themselves 
(at Bologna) , sometimes to the bachelors by preference (at Mont- 
pellier). 



FACULTIES OF CIVIL AND CANON LAW 233 

and all the students had the right of argumentation. 
The subject of the disputation was a point of law. . . . 
The argumentations lasted from Lent to Pentecost."^ 

The duration of the studies varied greatly from one 
university to another. At Montpellier, the regulation 
of 1339 declares that the students must be prevented 
from making too great haste to attain the baccalaureate 
and the doctorate (ne quis ad baccalariatum et subse- 
quenter ad doctorahim nimis propere prosiU7'e audeat). 
Consequently, six years of study were required for the 
baccalaureate in civil law, and five for the doctorate : 
eleven years in all. It is true that dispensations 
might be granted by the Bishop of Maguelonne to 
bachelors who had distinguished themselves, after 
three years of study. "At Bologna," says Savigny, 
"eight years were required to become a civil lawyer." 
Petrarch studied seven years at Montpellier and 
Bologna, and had finished his legal studies at twenty- 
two. But Petrarch was not an ordinary student, and 
it is certain that the great majority of his comrades 
took more time to reach the end of their scholastic 
life. 

How was the work of the students regulated in other 
respects? We have few details on this point. It is 
probable that the custom of writing during the courses 
was as prevalent as in our own day, if not still more 
so, on account of the scarcity of books. ^ But the 

1 Savigny, ch. xxi, § 100. 

2 The courses were most often dictated. Even when it was 
attempted, as happened more than once, especially at Paris, to 
compel the professors to speak extemporaneously, they were per- 
mitted to repeat twice what they said, so as to give the students 
time to write. 



234 ABELARD 

regulations of Montpellier, like those of Toulouse, 
while abounding in recommendations on many sub- 
jects, for instance, on the duty of being present at 
Mass on Sundays, and at the annual Mass for the 
repose of the dead; on decency in clothing; on the 
prohibition against dancing outside of one's own 
house, gaming for money, etc. ; are silent as to the 
obligations of students with regard to their personal 
tasks. Everything was comprehended, it appears, in 
following the courses (aiidire), and, when one had 
become a bachelor, in continuing to attend the lec- 
tures of the masters, and giving lectures in their turn 
(legere). 

IV 

A few words still remain to be said concerning the 
teaching of canon law, which, in most of the Facul- 
ties was done conjointly with that of civil law, but 
which, at Paris, was the especial object of legal 
study. 

If it were necessary to take the maxim of Seneca 
literally, " Timeo liominem \i7iius libri," nothing could 
be more awe-inspiring than the Faculties of the Mid- 
dle Ages. As a matter of fact, hardly any of them 
had more than one book, or a single author, as the 
subject of study. The Faculty of Arts had Aristotle, 
the Faculty of Civil Law had the Corpus juris of 
Justinian, the Faculty of Canon Law had Gratian's 
Decretal. 

The study of canon law, which was at first consid- 
ered a part of the theological course of study, became 



FACULTIES OF CIVIL AND CANON LAW 235 

specialized after the appearance of the Decretal of 
Gratian, in 1151. And it is to be observed that for 
canon law, as well as for civil law, the incentive pro- 
ceeded from Bologna. Gratian, in fact, was a Bo- 
lognese monk. He made a compilation of the canons 
of the Councils, papal decrees, and extracts from the 
Fathers of the Church, and arranged these matters in 
an orderly and methodical manner. The spirit of his 
book could not but be agreeable to the Court of Kome, 
for Gratian, who was criticised in later times by the 
Galileans, and notably by the Abbe Fleury in the 
seventeenth century, "made the power of the Pope 
unlimited." ^ Hence his work was approved by Euge- 
nius III, and the School of Bologna, which was teach- 
ing Justinian law with great success, adopted also the 
Decretal of Gratian.^ Thence it passed into the other 
universities. The Faculty of Paris took the. name of 
Faculty of Decretal, and the work of the Bolognese 
monk became the basis of its instruction. 

The other books studied by the canonists were, in 
fact, mere complem.ents of the Decretal : the Decretales, 
the Sexta, the Clementines. The Decretals had been 
put together in 1234, in a collection of five volumes, 
by Raymond de Pennaf ort, General of the Dominicans, 
under the title of the Decretals of Gregory IX, or 
Extra; that is to say, aside from the decretals col- 
lected by Gratian. Boniface VIII, in 1298, added a 
sixth book, whence its name of Sexta. Finally, the 

1 Crevier, t. i, p. 241. 

2 From this time on Bologna had two schools of law, the students 
of which formed but one university, although • they had distinct 
professoi-s. 



236 ABELARD 

Clementines, whicli contained the letters of Clement V, 
were published in 1313. 

In the Faculty of Decretal, as in that of Civil 
Law, there was a perpetual confusion of ordinary and 
extraordinary courses.^ In early times, at Paris, it 
was enough to have been a civil lawyer for three 
years in order to be admitted as a student of canon 
law; but this condition was speedily abolished, be- 
cause it had the effect of excluding the members of 
religious orders, to whom the study of civil law was 
forbidden. In 1370, to become a bachelor it was 
necessary to have studied canon law during forty- 
eight months within the space of six years. At 
Bologna, says Savigny, six years of study were also 
required to become a canonist. 

The Faculty of Canon Law seems to have been one 
of those in which the studies were least difficult, and 
wherein professors and pupils had the most leisure. 
The holidays, so frequent in all the Faculties, were 
still more so for the decretists of Paris, who had, ac- 
cording to Thurot, in addition to the sixty feast days 
common to the whole university, thirty-four that were 
special to themselves.^ In the statutes of Montpellier, 
which claimed, nevertheless, to reduce the number of 
holidays, " whicli have been recognized," say they, "as 
chiefly occasions of expense," we find the long list 

1 At Bologna the ordinary lessons treated of the Decretum and 
the Decretals ; at Montpellier, all the books were used, sometimes 
in the ordinary and sometimes in the extraordinary courses. At 
Bologna, in other words, such or such a book was considered funda- 
mental; at Montpellier the same book was interpreted in courses 
of different natures. 2 Thurot, p. 173. 



FACULTIES OF CIVIL AND CANON LAW 237 

of saints whose days the students were called upon to 
celebrate.^ But the official holidays were far from 
being the only ones on which the professors of canon 
law absented themselves from their lectures. Little 
by little, they came to consider the doctorate as a sine- 
cure ; they entrusted to bachelors the care of instruc- 
tion in their stead. " The Faculty of Decretal, " says 
Thurot, "was the most corrupt and venal of all the 
Faculties ; it had neither masters nor students : it had 
only sellers and buyers." ^ The abuses became so cry- 
ing in the sixteenth century, that the Parliament of 
Paris, in 1533, decided that thenceforward there 
should be but six doctor regents, who should be 
chosen by competition and obliged to give their lec- 
tures seriously. This was the ^^ college sexvii^al," 
concerning which, ten years later, in spite of the 
reforms that had been wrought, Ramus was unsparing 
in his criticism. 

There is no disguising the fact that the doctors of 
law whether canonists or civil lawyers, rich ecclesias- 
tics or rich advocates, formed a class, a caste by them- 
selves, in the universities of the Middle Ages. One 
recalls what Pope Honorius said about their luxury. 
At Paris, in order to be a doctor of the Faculty of De- 
cretal, it was necessary to prove an income of eighty 
livres (about five hundred francs of our money). The 
decretists of Paris constituted a collegium, in imitation 



1 Fournier, t. ii, p. 53. At Bologna there were about thirty holi- 
days, including fifteen days at Easter, and eleven at Christmas. 
If no feast day occurred during the week, lessons were suspended 
on Thursday. 2 Thurot, p. 183. 



238 ABELARB 

of the colleges of Bologna, entrance to which was ex- 
tremely difficult. The doctors of Bologna bound them- 
selves by oath, towards the middle of the thirteenth 
century, not to confer the doctorate on any except 
their sons, their brothers, or their nephews, seeking 
thus to make it hereditary in their own families ; and 
in spite of the Eector, and of the opposition of the 
inhabitants of the city, they more than once rejected 
fit candidates who had the misfortune of not being 
their relatives by blood or marriage. If masters of 
arts, and even theologians, occasionally showed little 
sympathy for the jurists, the latter repaid them with 
something of disdain. They really considered them- 
selves as belonging to another race, these professors 
of law who, at Poitiers, for example, maintained that 
hereditary nobility even, was a prerogative of their 
position, and who added in their diffuse style: "The 
texts of Koman law have always lavished the most 
honorable titles on the professors of law: they are 
spoken of as noble, as very noble, as magnificent, as 
ministers and priests of justice. . . . The emperors 
Theodosius and Valentinian honored them, after 
twenty years of service, with the title of counts of 
the first rank. In the imperial chamber of Spires, 
doctors and nobles enjoy the same prerogatives." 
There was an evident pretension on the part of the 
doctors of law to place themselves above the rest. In 
those days of privilege men had not yet arrived at 
regarding equality as the rule both in scientific and 
in civil society; they had not as yet come to admit 
that in the Republic of Letters there is no primacy 
save such as belongs to knowledge and talent. And 



FACULTIES OF CIVIL AND CANON LAW 239 

particularly were tliey wanting in that ideal cherished 
by the moderns, of an university wherein, no rivalry 
existing between Faculty and Faculty, the representa- 
tives of various orders of studies, in the most perfect 
solidarity and union, each in his own place and 
with equal rights, shall labor — for the diffusion of 
universal knowledge. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE FACULTIES OF MEDICINE 

Unfavorable attitude of the Middle Ages toward medical studies 
— Experience neglected — Nevertheless an important movement 
in medical studies began at Salerno— The Abbey of Moute- 
Cassino — Constantine the African and his influence — The stat- 
utes of King Roger II and of the Emperor Frederick II — The 
School of Montpellier — Importance of this university — Influ- 
ence of Arabian Medicine — Italian physicians in France — II. 
Books and Methods — Theoretic teaching — Hippocrates and 
Galen — Salernitan books — Other modern text-books — Odd pro- 
hibitions — Medicines for the Soul applied first — Lack of prac- 
tical teaching — Dissection rare — Surgery despised. 



Medical studies doubtless resulted in nothing very 
brilliant during the Middle Ages. The revival of ex- 
perimental methods and the coming of the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries were necessary before seri- 
ous physiological studies modified and transformed 
the art of healing, or, at least, the treatment of 
disease. Although, in his letters patent of 1396, 
relating to the University of Montpellier, Charles VI, 
King of France, had already declared that '^ Experi- 
ence is the mistress of sciences, especially of medical 
science,"^ yet experience gained little honor in an 

1 " . . . Experientia quse in facto medicinali prsesertim res est 
magistra. ..." (Fournier, t. ii, p. 162.) 
240 



THE FACULTIES OF MEDICINE 241 

age when the authority of Aristotle outweighed the 
authority of nature. Consequently, medical instruc- 
tion lagged along in the rut of routine, repeating the 
lessons of Hippocrates and Galen, and as much en- 
slaved to commenting on the texts of Greek or Alex- 
andrian medicine, as juridical instruction was to the 
task of explaining the monuments of Eoman law. 

Moreover, it must not be forgotten that the religious 
and mystical spirit of the Middle Ages, which was too 
frequently inclined to see in maladies the signs of 
divine wrath, and to look to the divine will alone for 
their cure, placed more reliance on spiritual succor, 
or the intervention of the terrestrial representatives 
of the Deity, than on the healing virtues of human 
scieDce. Jesus, healing the sick by the imposition of 
His hands, giving sight to the blind, movement to 
paralytics, and by invoking the living God, restoring 
the dead to life in the name of His Father, seemed to 
have announced to the world that prayer and faith were 
the best and most powerful remedies against human 
infirmities.^ Hence kings, the delegates of Divine 
power, attributed to themselves the power to cure 
scrofulous and other diseased persons simply by touch- 
ing them. The monks, not disdainful of medicine, 
and joining that mode of action to all others, yet 
recommended prayer, pilgrimages to places of devo- 
tion, and visits to the relics of saints first of all. 

And yet, in spite of all prejudices to the contrary, 
medical instruction was given in the Middle Ages. 
The majority of the universities had their Faculty of 

1 Lacroix, Sciences et arts au moyen age, Paris, Didot, 1887. 
Sciences medicales, p. 149. 



212 ABELARD 

Medicine. In Italy, Salerno and Naples, Plaisance, 
Arezzo, Eome, Perugia, Treviso, Pisa, Florence, Siena, 
Pavia, Ferrara; in France, Paris, Montpellier, Tou- 
louse, Avignon, Caliors, Grenoble, Perpignan, Orange ; 
in England, Oxford; in Ireland, Dublin; in Spain, 
Salamanca, Lerida, Huesca ; in Portugal, Coimbra ; in 
Austria, Prague, Cracow, Ofen; in Germany, Heidel- 
berg, Erfurt ; more than than thirty cities, in a word, 
have had regular bodies of medical professors ever 
since the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 

To explain this movement, apparently so consider- 
able, notice must be taken of a multitude of en- 
tirely independent efforts ; nor must we forget the 
influence exerted by Arabian medicine. But it re- 
mains none the less true, that there was an initial 
centre of action for medicine, as well as for philosophy, 
the arts, and law. The impulse came first of all from 
a city, — Salerno ; and in that city from a man, — 
Constantine, surnamed the African, who merits, all 
things considered, to be placed in the same rank as 
the other two great initiators of university instruc- 
tion, Abelard and Irnerius. 

it is indisputable that the school of Salerno was 
a source of medical studies in the Middle Ages, fona 
mediciyice, as Petrarch said. And it must be noticed 
at once that this school was never erected into a 
university. Only a few miles distant from the city 
of Naples, it was, one might say, incorporated with 
the University of Naples ; it became a sort of detached 
member when the latter was organized by the Emperor 
Frederick II, in 1224. 

Let me briefly recall the history of the school of 



THE FACULTIES OF MEDICINE 243 

Salerno,^ since for medicine it has been what Bologna 
was for law and Paris for philosophy. It seems that 
its first beginnings must be sought for in the Abbey 
of Monte-Cassino, founded by the Benedictines in 
528, at some distance from Salerno. Medicine was 
studied in this monastery with marked devotion. 
The monks copied and recopied the works of Hippo- 
crates and Galen, which had been translated into Latin 
as early as the sixth century. The abbats of Monte- 
Cassino were distinguished for their medical knowl- 
edge. About 856, Bertharius compiled a summary 
of hygienic rules; after him, Alphanus wrote a 
book on The Union of Soul and Body, and another 
entitled The Four Humors; finally. Pope Victor III 
(1085), who had been previously abbat of Monte- 
Cassino, is reputed to have been medicince peritissimus. 
From the monastery of Monte-Cassino the taste for 
medical studies spread as far as Salerno; and by the 
eleventh century, the little town had become an in- 
tellectual centre which attracted students from all 
parts of Western Europe. "I think," says Laurie, 
"that the school of Salerno may be considered as 
having been a public school from 1060, and a privi- 
leged school after 1100." ^ It was in the latter year 
that the physicians of Salerno, styling themselves 
tota schola Salerni, dedicated to the King of England 
their celebrated rules of health, written in Latin 
verse. It is indubitable, and the fact deserves notice, 
that medical studies were the first that formed a 

1 See Laurie, op. cit., Lecture VII. 

2 The school seems to me to have been chiefly organized after thQ 
Normans had conquered Salerno, that is, after 1075. 



244 ABELARD 

regular centre of instruction in the Middle Ages ; the 
schools of Bologna and Paris, in fact, date from the 
twelfth century only. 

But, as I have said, the honor of making known the 
school of Salerno, of giving it by his personal labors 
a vigorous impulse toward higher studies, and of 
being, in a word, its veritable founder, was reserved 
for one man. Constantine, surnamed the African, 
whose works we shall presently find inscribed on the 
programmes of the French medical faculties, was a 
remarkable man for his time. Born at Carthage, in 
the first half of the eleventh century, he travelled 
throughout the East, studied in Babylon, visited India 
and Egypt, and finally established himself in Carthage 
as a physician. But, for one reason or another, per- 
haps because his compatriots accused him of sorcery, 
— an accusation seldom spared the physicians of that 
age, — he took refuge in Salerno about the year 1063. 
There he became the secretary and favorite of the 
Norman, Robert Guiscard, who had just seized pos- 
session of Southern Italy.^ Finally he retired to 
Monte-Cassino, where he died in 1087. Constantine 
composed a considerable number of works, some of 
them original, some mere translations 5 among others, 
the Viaticum, translated from the Arabian physician, 
Ysaac, which found its way later into all the schools. 

The favor extended to Constantine by Eobert Guis- 
card was not improbably connected with the protec- 
tion granted to the school of Salerno by the Norman 
conqueror, who conferred on it privileges that were 
confirmed by his successors. Some years later, in 

1 Robert Guiscard (1015-1085). 



THE FACULTIES OF MEDICINE 245 

1137, Roger II, King of Sicily, regulated for the first 
time, as it seems, the professional examinations in 
medicine. The doctors of the school, aided by the 
royal assessors, constituted the jury, and conferred 
the license — not the right to teach, but the right to 
practise medicine (licentia medendi). Any person 
pretending to exercise the medical art without having 
obtained this license, was punished by the confisca- 
tion of his property and a year's imprisonment. The 
edict of King Eoger said that these measures were 
taken in order to prevent ne in regno nostra subjecti 
periditentur imperitia medicorum. 

Statutes analogous to this were promulgated in 
1247 by the Emperor Frederick II, then master of 
Southern Italy. Salerno, thenceforward attached to 
the University of Naples, remained the privileged 
school of medicine.^ Those desiring to pursue a 
course of medical study, which lasted for five years, 
must have already followed a course of logic for three 
years in the school of arts. Moreover, after the five 
years employed in studying medicine and surgery, 
" which is," say the statutes, •' a part of medicine," 
the new doctor was bound, for still another year, not 
to practise his art except under the supervision (cum 
consilio) of an experienced physician. Doctors were 
enjoined to give advice to the poor gratuitously; and 
also to visit their patients twice every day and once 
during the night. The imperial edict also fixed the 
charge for these visits, when they were to be paid 

1 See the text in Duboulay, t. iii,p. 159. . . . "Nullus in medi- 
cina vel in chirurgia nisi apud Salernum vel Neapolem legat in 
regno.'* 



246 ABELARD 

for. Other very detailed rules were established relat- 
ing to the sale of medicines. The books to be studied 
were those of Hippocrates and Galen. 

Salerno, then, was the initiator of medical studies 
in the Middle Ages. These studies were held in such 
honor that even women pursued them, thus taking 
precedence of the doctresses of the nineteenth century. 
Mr. Laurie mentions Sichelgaita, a sister of Gisulfe, 
Duke of Salerno before the Norman Conquest, who 
"had a medical reputation, especially in the depart- 
ment of poisons." The reputation of Salerno was 
European. In 1090, Duke Robert, brother of William 
the Conqueror, repaired thither on his return from 
the Crusade, in order to be healed of a grievous 
wound. 

But while Salerno was flourishing in Italy, and 
by its direct influence leading to the foundation of 
Faculties of Medicine in a great number of Italian 
universities, another school, that of Montpellier, was 
developing in France, chiefly under the influence of 
Spanish and Arabian medicine. The first statutes of 
the Montpellier Faculty of Medicine date from 1220,^ 
about the same time that the statutes of Frederick II 
were issued for Salerno. But in these very statutes 
it is said that instruction in medical science had long 
been held in honor at Montpellier, and had diffused 
its benefits throughout all parts of the world. 

The conditions at Montpellier were specially favor- 
able to its becoming a centre of university studies. 

1 It was Cardiual Conrad, the Pope's legate, who drew up these 
statutes. Others were drawn up in 1240 and in 1340 (see Fournier, 
t.ii, pp. 4, 7, 66). 



THE FACULTIES OF MEDICINE 247 

From early times a commercial rendezvous, where 
Christians and Saracens, Arabs from Spain and mer- 
chants from Lombardy, came to traffic, it displayed 
hospitality to foreigners, and the learned men of Italy 
and Spain followed the traders thither. ^' Those who 
came from Spain," says M. Croiset, "were chiefly 
Jewish physicians. Montpellier was at that period 
one of those cities in the world where they had the 
greatest chance of living a quiet life. Commerce had 
introduced a relative tolerance in manners and cus- 
toms which was greatly to their advantage. Disciples 
of Avicenna and Averroes, they brought with them an 
Arabian science wholly permeated with Greek tradi- 
tion. Thanks to their influence, Montpellier, from 
the twelfth century, had a medical reputation." ^ 
This reputation increased as time went on ; and " while 
the school of Salerno became extinct, Montpellier has 
remained great throughout the ages." ^ The medical 
diplomas of Montpellier are still esteemed by foreign- 
ers. Rabelais took his degrees there in the sixteenth 
century. Locke went there to study in the seventeenth. 
Throughout the Middle Ages the reputation of Mont- 
pellier, like that of Salerno, was universal. "It is 
at Montpellier," wrote Charles the Bad, King of 
Navarre, in the fourteenth century, "that common 
opinion locates the source of medical science ; and it 
is for that reason that popes and kings summon its 
masters to come and heal them." It was Montpellier 

1 Les Fetes du Centenaire de Montpellier, 1889. Discours de M. 
Croiset. 

2 Ibid. Discours de M. Gaudenzi, professor of the University of 
Bologna. 



248 ABELARD 

that Cliarles VI, in his Letters Patent of 1396, called 
the source {fons origmalis) of medical science. It 
was a professor of Montpellier, Guy de Chauliac, who 
published in the fourteenth century (1363) his Grande 
Chirurgie, of which Victor Leclerc has said that it 
"marked a notable progress in studies based on the 
observation of nature." ^ 

Does it follow that Italian influence did not make 
itself felt in Montpellier and other Faculties of 
medicine in the west of Europe ? No ; in what con- 
cerns surgery especially, that influence is manifest. 
Guy de Chauliac, whom I have just cited, had studied 
at Bologna. Says Littre : '' There is a fact worthy of 
attention in the history of surgery in France during 
the second half of the thirteenth century. A number 
of Italian doctors, who were at once physicians and 
surgeons, having abandoned their country in conse- 
quence of the troubles occasioned by the rivalries of 
the Guelphs and Ghibellines, took refuge on French 
soil, and brought thither the doctrines and works of 
Albou Kasis,^ that famous Arabian physician, born 
in Spain, who is regarded as the restorer of surgi- 
cal science. This importation seems to date from 
the arrival in Paris of a doctor from the school 
of Salerno, Roger of Salerno, or Eoger of Parma." ^ 

1 Guy de Chauliac published his book uuder this title : Inven- 
toriutn sive collectorium partis chirurgicalis medicinse. In 1592 
this work was translated into French under the title of Grande 
Chirurgie. 

2 Albou Kasis died in 1107, author of several works on medicine 
and surgery which have been several times translated into Latin. 
From the fourteenth century his authority was quoted in France as 
equal to that of Hippocrates and Galen. 

3 "After him came successively to France, Bruno of Calabria, 



THE FACULTIES OF MEDICINE 249 

It has been claimed, but not proven, that Roger of 
Parma (died about 1280) must have been Chancellor 
of the University of Montpellier. And this impor- 
tation of Italian science was not without its uses in 
reanimating and enlightening French surgery, if we 
may believe Lanfranc of Milan, who, on his arrival 
in France, about 1290, said that '^French surgeons 
were real bunglers, and so ignorant that one could 
scarcely find a rational surgeon among them." ^ An- 
other French physician of the end of the thirteenth 
century, who had studied at Salerno,^ John of St. 
Paul. Others had doubtless done the same; and, 
in any case, it is easy to see, in the writings of the 
French physicians of the thirteenth century, that all 
of them quote with respect and admiration the author- 
ities of the School of Salerno, not merely Constan- 
tine and Ysaac, but Nicolas, Eomuald, Bartholomans, 
and many others. 

''Let me attempt a brief sketch of the studies pur- 
sued in the medical schools of the Middle Ages, and, 
in the first place, of the theoretical instruction given 
therein. The most precise indication of the works 
that served as text-books for the professors of medicine 
is found in a bull of Clement V (1309), concerning the 
authors to be studied and the forms to be observed 
in conferring degrees in the Faculty of Medicine at 
Montpellier.^ Another document, somewhat earlier 
than this (1270-1274), a regulation determining the 

Lanfranc of Milan, Thaddeus of Bologna. ..." And Littre cites 
eight additional names, " without counting other less known 
authors " (Histoire litteraire de la France, t. xxi, p. 514). 

i/&id., p. 517. ^ Ibid., -p. 4:09. 3 pournier, t. ii, p. 21. 



250 ABELARD 

conditions of a license in medicine and the authors 
to be studied in the Faculty of Medicine at Paris, 
proves that the programmes and regulations were 
everywhere the same.^ 

Hippocrates and Galen are always the basis of the in- 
struction given ; their principal works are enumerated 
under the titles given by their Latin translators. ^ 
Greek, as is known, was not much cultivated in the 
Middle Ages ; and possibly it is not erroneously re- 
lated of Eabelais, who studied medicine at Montpellier 
from 1520 to 1530, that he was the first among his 
comrades who had read and interpreted the text of 
the Greek physicians. By the side of Hippocrates 
and Galen, those two Aristotles of medicine, the pro- 
grammes of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries 
find a place for modern authors. First comes Con- 
stantine, the master of Salerno, with his original 
works and his translations from Arabian physicians. 
Among these were his Viaticum, and the TJieorica et 
pratica, from the Arabic of Hali- Abbas. Then follows 
Ehazes, surnamed "the observer" (850-953), who had 
been a doctor in the hospital of Bagdad ; the Persian 
Avicenna (980- ), who was called the "prince of 
doctors," but whose works were little more than a 
compilation of the ideas of Galen ; Ysaac, who had 
written several treatises in Arabic, most of them 
translated by Constantine, among others, the Distoe 



* Chartularium Univ. Paris., t. i, p. 517. 

2 Of Hippocrates, the books of the Pronosticorum and the 
Aphorismorum ; of Galen, the following: De Complexionibus, De 
Malitia complexionis diversx, De Simplici medicina, De Morbo et 
Accidente, De Crisis et Criticis diehtis. 



THE FACULTIES OF MEDICINE 251 

universales et particulares, annotated by a famous doc- 
tor of the Paris University, John of St. Amand (died 
about 1300) ; and the Liber Febrium ; ^ Johannicus, 
another Arabian physician, author of a work on the 
pulse; Nicolas, a doctor of Salerno, whose Antido- 
tarium ^ was a classic, and who came to France in the 
thirteenth century. 

Judging from this list of standard medical authors, 
the influence of the Arabs must have been at least 
equal to that of the Greeks in the medical schools of 
the Middle Ages.^ Mussulman civilization has exerted 
an influence on the civilization of Christianity whose 
importance has not been sufficiently recognized. It is 
rather significant to observe that in the programme 
of the Faculty of Paris for 1270, neither Hippocrates 
nor Galen is named, nor is any allusion made to the 
two famous Greek physicians. 

According to the regulation of 1272, the bachelor 
who desired to obtain his license must prove that he 
had attended the medical courses for five years, if he 
had been already licensed in arts, and six years if the 
contrary were the case. Nothing is said of the bac- 
calaureate. But it is known from other documents 

1 The BistSR particulares are inscribed on the programme of 
Paris; the Liber Fehrium on that of Montpellier. 

^ Anticlotarium, which seems properly to signify the "Book of 
Antidotes," the counter-poisons, became in the Middle Ages synony- 
mous with the " Book of Medicaments." Rhazes also had written 
an Antidotarium. John of St. Amand annotated both of these 
works. 

3 I have mentioned all of them, excepting a work studied at 
Paris and Montpellier, the Liber urinarum, whose author, Theo- 
phile, is unknown to us ; and also the Versus Egidii. Egidius of 
Corbeil taught medicine at Paris under Philip Augustus. 



262 ABELARD 

of the same period that the normal duration of 
medical studies in their totality was nine years. ^ At 
Montpellier, the statutes of 1340 required twenty-four 
months of study for the baccalaureate;^ in other 
words, three years, each scholastic year counting eight 
months only, by reason of holidays and vacations ; ^ 
the licentiateship or the doctorate demanded five or 
six years more. Rabelais in the sixteenth century 
took a still longer time : a bachelor in 1530, he was 
not a doctor until 1537 ; but Rabelais was an erratic 
student, who wrote one part of his Pantagruel in the 
interval between his two diplomas. 

The distribution of lessons and the order for the 
reading and explanation of texts seem to have been 
regulated with less precision and severity in the 
Faculty of Medicine than in that of Law. We know 
that lessons were given ordinari^ and cursori^ ; ^ that 
there were disputationes and repetitiones ;^ and that 
here as everywhere, the instruction was a literal in- 
terpretation of hallowed texts rather than an appeal 
to experience and the individual judgment of the 
pupils. " I copied," relates Platter, a student of 
Montpellier, in the sixteenth century, " the loci com- 
munes in tota medicina; I tabulated the most important 
books of Galen. Once my comrades and I spent the 
night in copying a book, de com2:)onendis medicamentis. 

1 At Montpellier the same, or nearly the same, rules existed : 
quinque annis si in partihus magistri existant alioquin per sex 
annos (Fournier, t. ii, p. 21). 

2 Crevier, t. ii, p. 53. ^ Fournier, t. ii, p. 71. 

4 See the regulation already cited, of 1270: ''Forma auditionis 
librorum est quod bachalarius debet aiidivisse bis artem medicinx 
ordinaria et semel cursoria. ..." ^ Fournier, t. ii, p. 70. 



THE FACULTIES OF MEDICINE 253 

We were careful not to omit a recipe for making the 
hair grow. Beardless as yet, we thought mustaches 
would give us a more respectable appearance." ^ 

Texts and their explanations to be listened to ; texts 
to copy and recopy; in a word, a book education: 
such the character of medical instruction remained at 
the height of the Eenaissance. 

I have already had occasion to say that the uni- 
versities of the Middle Ages had almost no idea of 
the mutual service which could be rendered by the 
different orders of studies, and barely suspected the 
solidarity of the sciences. A curious decree of 
the Montpellier statutes for 1340, affords another 
proof of this : ^^ We have decided that no master shall 
read or permit to be read in the medical schools any 
book of grammar or logic '^ ; so far so good ; but what 
is to be said of the end of this prohibition ? " Nor 
any book of natural science exce]3t De Animalibus.^^ ^ 

Another citation from the same regulations will 
show how completely medicine in those days subordi- 
nated itself to religion, believing that it could not do 
its work efB.caciously unless it were aided by the 
medicine of souls: "As bodily evils sometimes pro- 
ceed from sin, and as God said to the sick man whom 
He cured: ^Go, and sin no more, lest a worse evil 
befall thee,' we ordain that when a master is called 
to a sick person in a critical condition, or suffering 
from a continuous fever, he shall in the first place 
counsel the patient to have the physicians of the 
soul summoned, so that, the spiritual safety of the 
sick person being already assured, he may afterwards 

1 Valbrigue, op. cit., p. 22. 2 Fournier, t. ii, p. 70. 



254 ABELARD 

proceed with more success to the remedies of bodily- 
medicine." ^ 

The regulations, and notably those of Montpellier, 
forbade the practice of medicine before the course of 
study had been completed and the doctor's degree 
obtained. But these prohibitions were not much ob- 
served. The newest and most inexperienced bachelors 
practised their art (and Crevier testifies that the case 
was the same at Paris), " without hindrance, although 
without legal authorization." ^ At Montpellier still 
greater laxness was displayed ; bachelors were author- 
ized to practise medicine, with the bizarre restriction, 
which proves a certain contempt for countrymen, that 
they should bind themselves by oath not to do so 
except outside of the city and its suburbs; thus 
making a sort of first trial of their skill or their 
clumsiness in anima vili; whence the custom, the 
knowledge of which has been preserved by the histo- 
rians of the University of Montpellier, that when the 
promotions to the baccalaureate were made, each new 
bachelor in medicine was received by his comrades 
with blows, and cries of "Vade et occkle, Cai7i!^' 

Was there in the Middle Ages, in addition to a 
very insufficient theoretical instruction based on the 
hypotheses of ancient medicine, a practical instruc- 
tion such as presupposes either anatomical study of the 
cadaver, or clinical lessons given in hospitals beside 
the beds of the sick ? Given the intellectual habits 
of the Middle Ages, we shall not be surprised to find 
that in this respect medical apprenticeship was ex- 
tremely incomplete. It appears that the only custom 

1 Fournier, t. ii, p. G7. 2 Crevier, t. ii, p. 52. 



THE FACULTIES OF MEDICINE 255 

akin to what we nowadays call the clinic, was the 
term of probation imposed at Salerno and other schools 
on young doctors who had taken their degrees, but 
were forbidden to practise their art for one or two 
years except under the surveillance and tutelage of 
an experienced physician.^ As to anatomy, it was 
still in its infancy.^ A dissection was a rare event. 
At Montpellier, the statutes of 1340 provide that there 
shall be a dissection once every two years.^ In 1396 
the letters patent of King Charles VI ordained that 
there should be delivered every year to the faculty 
of medicine, for purposes of anatomical study, the 
cadaver of a criminal, " of either sex or of any class, 
hanged, drowned, or slain in any other manner after 
legal condemnation." ^ The corpse of the criminal, 
after dissection, was buried with all the rites and cere- 
monies of religion. 

It was not in Moliere's time only that dissections 
became a real spectacle, to which even ladies thronged 
as to a festival.^ At Montpellier the spectators usually 
included not merely the students, but a great number 
of curious persons, citizens, nobles, and even women, 
although it might be the cadaver of a man that was 
to be dissected. Many monks went likewise. The 

1 At Paris, before presenting himself for the license, a bachelor 
must have practised medicine during two summers under the guid- 
ance of a master regent. 

2 It must not be forgotten that the Arabs, whose labors, as we 
have seen, had so great an influence upon European medicine, for- 
bade the study of anatomy through religious scruples. 

3 Those of the Faculty of Paris for 1600 say there shall be two 
anatomical stances each year. * Fournier, t. ii, p. 162. 

5 See Moliere, Le Malade Imaginaire. 



256 ABELARD 

dissection was presided over by a professor ; the scalpel 
was handled by a barber, the surgeon of those days. 
The cost of the operation was defrayed by the stu- 
dents.^ 

Even in the sixteenth century, dissections seldom 
took place more than once a year. And yet the 
following anecdote, related by Platter, proves that 
the students were desirous of instruction, and, know- 
ing the value of researches made on the human body, 
asked nothing better than to be put in the presence 
of cadavers : ^ " We went," he says, " to disinter 
secretly, in adjacent cemeteries, the dead who had 
been buried the same day. . . . My first expedition 
of the sort occurred on December 11, 1554. ... At 
midnight, well armed, and observing the most pro- 
found silence, we repaired to the cemetery of St. 
Denis ; we disinterred a body, employing nothing but 
our hands, because the earth had not had time enough 
yet to harden. Then Ave drew out the corpse by 
means of a cord, wrapped it in our mantles, and 
carried it on two sticks to the entrance of the city. 
There we rapped on the wicket; an old porter pre- 
sented himself, and opened it; we asked for some- 
thing to drink, and while he went for wine, three of 
us brought in the corpse, and carried it to the neigh- 
boring house of one of our comrades. Afterwards the 
monks of St. Denis were obliged to guard their ceme- 
tery, and they shot arrows from their windows at the 
students who came there." 

What clearly demonstrates the state of inferiority 

1 Platter, in his account of his stay at Montpellier, quoted by 
Valabregue, op. cit., p. 24. 2 Ihid., p. 25. 



THE FACULTIES OF MEDICINE 257 

in which the practical study of medicine remained 
throughout the Middle Ages, is the disdain expressed 
for surgery, which was considered a mean handicraft, 
and abandoned to barbers. In 1600, at the time of 
the reform of the University of Paris by Henry TV, 
surgeons were still excluded from the degrees of the 
Faculty of Medicine, or were admitted to them only 
on swearing that they would not practise surgery 
thereafter. 

Actual study, then, was restricted within the nar- 
rowest limits in the Faculties of Medicine. Even at 
Paris, after several centuries of development, there 
was in 1600 only one professor to teach both anatomy 
and botany.^ The Faculty of Medicine which, by 
the very nature of its studies should have avoided 
and withdrawn completely from the dialectical fury 
and mania for discussion which were the great curse 
of mediaeval instruction, was attacked by the same 
malady as the other Faculties. Thurot says: "It 
attached much more importance to disputations than 
to lessons." ^ The ordinary disputations took place 

1 ** As our city," said a physician of Montpellier, " was the first 
where public demonstrations in anatomy were given, so it has been 
the first to give public lessons in botany, and to possess a royal 
garden of medicinal plants" (Astruc — 3/emoires, p. 67). The 
Montpellier Garden of Plants was not organized until 1593, after 
those of Pisa (1546), Leyden (1577), and Leipsic (1579). 

2 Thurot, op. cit., p. 197. The lessons were greatly neglected, 
neither masters nor students forcing themselves to pursue them 
regularly. " The statutes of 1660 limit themselves to saying : " Stu- 
dents shall frequently be present at the public lessons." One 
Faculty of Medicine, that of Poitiers, during several centuries con- 
fined itself to conferring degrees, without giving any instruction 
whatever. 



258 ABELARD 

every Monday and Tuesday from All Saints' Day 
until Lent ; that is, during three or four months. In 
addition to these, there was one disputation more 
formal than the others, called quodlibetaire, because 
it might relate indifferently to any subject ; and each 
master was obliged to take part in it in his turn, 
under penalty of deposition. The supreme end to be 
attained was not the acquirement of positive knowl- 
edge, but skill in dialectic. The idea that man is 
made to reason, to be a perpetual dialectician, even 
in medicine, dominated the human mind ; and people 
seemed to think that syllogisms were good for every- 
thing, even disease ! 

Such a programme of studies could hardly form any 
but mediocre practitioners. Doubtless there were ex- 
ceptions ; and I would not say that all physicians of 
the Middle Ages deserved the raillery and insults 
lavished on them by Petrarch in the pamphlet en- 
titled. Invectives against a Physician. Nevertheless, 
it is probable there was some truth in the unfavor- 
able portrait of the doctors of his day, drawn by 
the same Petrarch, in a letter to Boccaccio, wherein 
he reproached them, not merely with their noisy 
charlatanism, but the deadly effects of their inca- 
pacity. "They never appear in public," says he, 
"without being superbly dressed, mounted on mag- 
nificent horses, and wearing golden spurs ! . . . Next 
thing you know," he adds, mingling hyperbole with 
his irony, "they will arrogate the honors of a tri- 
umph ! And, in fact, they deserve it ; for there is 
not one among them who has not killed at least five 



THE FACULTIES OF MEDICINE 259 

thousand men, and tliat is the required number to 
entitle one to those honors ! " ^ 

There is, of course, no more reason for taking these 
declamatory exaggerations of Petrarch literally, than 
there would be for subscribing to all the jests of 
Moliere against the Diafoirus and the Purgons of 
the seventeenth century. It would be especially un- 
just to hold responsible for the universal errors, of 
which they were themselves victims, those men of 
the Middle Ages who devoted themselves to the art 
of healing their fellows, so far as they were able to 
acquire it. It was not their fault if the general system 
of study rendered them more apt at distinguishing 
the premises and consequences of a train of reason- 
ing than in diagnosing disease ; more skilful in man- 
aging an argument than handling the scalpel and the 
bistoury. To be just, we must take into consideration 
the fact that the profession of medicine, difficult and 
dangerous at all times, was especially so at a time 
when hygiene was a thing almost unknown, and epi- 
demics raged with violence. One is glad to recall, as 
one instance, that at the time of the plague of 1533 
at Montpellier the doctors of that city did their duty 
bravely, and paid a heavy tribute to death by expos- 
ing themselves to contagion. 

1 Quoted by Eenan, Averroes, p. 262. 



Part IY 

general spirit and influence of 
the early universities 



CHAPTER I 
MANNERS AND HABITS OF STUDENTS AND TEACHERS 

I. Admiration excited among contemporaries — Testimony of 
John of Salisbury and Petrarch — Habits of the Students — Eager- 
ness for study — Privations endured — Relations between stu- 
dents and masters — Student guilds and associations — Mutual 
assistance — Tendency towards equality — H. Frequency of 
disorder in the university associations — Quarrels between stu- 
dents — With masters — With citizens — Turbulent and bluster- 
ing humor — Examples of riots — Licentiousness of the scholastic 
life — Lack of elegance and even of cleanliness — Ascetic rules 
— An oppressive system jQnally substituted for the original liberty 
— Discipline of the rod — HI. The masters — Habits of pedan- 
try — Some irregularities of conduct — Teachers too dependent 
on students — Appointed and chosen by them — Salaries of the 
masters — Their poverty — Consequences of this — Celibacy. 

Before leaving the universities of the Middle Ages, 
we must take a last glance at the internal life of 
these assemblages of students and masters which, in 
certain cities, had acquired proportions so consider- 
able. What were their manners and customs, their 
qualities and defects ? What was their general spirit? 
How was their influence shown in their prosperous 
days before they dwindled into feeble institutions 
from which life gradually departed, leaving the move- 
ment of thought to slip insensibly out of their hands 
in order to renew itself beyond them ; until, reaching 
their last stage of decay, they were destined either 

263 



264 ABELARD 

to disappear or be transformed, that they might be 
born anew under the same title, but in forms and 
conditions more conformable to the requirements of 
the modern spirit ? 



The first thing to be noted is the enthusiastic 
admiration aroused in those who visited them or who 
studied there, by these learned cities, these "Latin 
quarters," where nothing was taught or spoken save 
in Latin, and which were scattered here and there 
amidst the uncultivated and barbarous society of the 
Middle Ages like oases in a desert. Nothing proves 
more conclusively how well the old universities, in 
spite of. their admitted faults, responded to the aspi- 
rations and necessities of their times. Here, for 
example, is John of Salisbury, in 1167, saluting 
France with veneration as the most hospitable, the 
most civilized of Nations (omnium mitisslma et civilis- 
sima nationum). "I saw at Paris," he says, "abun- 
dance of life, popular joy, life respected, a crowd 
of philosophers absorbed in various occupations. I 
seemed to behold Jacob's ladder, with the angels 
ascending and descending on it." ^ And here is 
Petrarch, in the fourteenth century, recalling in his 
old age, the delightful memories which Montpellier 
had impressed upon his youth : " On passing out of 
childhood, I spent four years at Montpellier, at 
that time a very flourishing city. What tranquillity 
reigned there ! What peace ! What riches were pos- 

1 Chartularium Univ. Paris., t. i, p. 17. 



STUDENTS AND TEACHERS 265 

sessed by the merchants ! What a crowd of stu- 
dents ! What an abundance of masters." ^ 

As Savigny has very justly remarked, the uni- 
versities of the Middle Ages owed their special 
importance to the fact of their taking a much more 
considerable share in education than is done by the 
universities of our own day. " They had not to dread 
the competition of the gymnasia, or the multitude of 
books now published everywhere. Moreover, the scho- 
lastic period was much longer and the students often 
of riper years. Bishops were sometimes seen attend- 
ing the courses, their rank, functions, and dignity 
lending an eclat to the university of which they are 
now deprived." ^ The universities were not merely, 
as at present, schools of higher education crowning 
a system of pedagogic institutions ; they were the 
only schools, the only places in the world, where men 
could study or exercise their minds with a certain 
degree of freedom. With what joyful enthusiasm 
must young men, eager for instruction, and glad of 
an opportunity to acquire learning without immuring 
themselves in monasteries or submitting to the clois- 
tral yoke, have hastened toward renowned masters 
whose reputation had penetrated even to distant 
lands ! Then again in an age disturbed by con- 
tinual wars and unprovided with a regular police, 
what good fortune it must have seemed, to find in 
large and well-provided cities, under the protection 
and safeguard of public authorities, safe places, asy- 
lums as it were, where studies might be pursued 

1 Petrarch, Rer. Sen., Lib. x, Epist. 2. 

2 Savigny, op. cit., chap, xxi, § 58. 



266 ABELARD 

unmolested, and where, thanks to innumerable privi- 
leges, they were honored and respected. 

In such a time as ours, when so many facilities are 
offered to all who desire to study, and when, so far 
as instruction goes, the supply certainly outruns the 
demand, it is not easy to form an adequate notion of 
the spontaneity and ardent zeal for study which ani- 
mated the thousands of young men who formed the 
audiences at the mediaeval universities. At present, 
it is most frequently the social condition of young 
men, their birth and fortune, which destines them, 
and often without any strong bent, and iiivitd Min- 
ervd, to pursue the courses of superior instruction. In 
the Middle Ages the students were all volunteers of 
science : none frequented the universities but those 
who had a particular aptitude and a personal taste for 
study ; and, like all volunteers, they brought an extraor- 
dinary zeal and enthusiasm to their tasks. Great was 
the number of those who, destitute of all resources, 
joyfully braved privation, poverty, and the irksome- 
ness of menial service, in order that they might pene- 
trate at last into the sanctuary of knowledge. "The 
University of Paris was poor," says Crevier.^ The 
majority of the students were so likewise.^ "Many of 
them," says Thurot, " begged their bread. They found 
this no humiliation. The example of the mendicant 
orders, and especially of the Franciscans, had rendered 
mendicancy respectable. The bursars of the college of 
Laon distributed their leavings to poor scholars of 

1 Crevier, t. vii, p. 152, 

2 " There were nobles there, and there were plebeians; there 
were no rich men " (Lecoy de la Marche, op. cit., p. 4G1). 



STUDENTS AND TEACHERS 267 

their own Nation. Masters gave their old clothes and 
shoes to their students. To gain the wherewithal to 
live, scholars copied books, swept, became scavengers. 
They often entered the service of a college, a wealthy 
student, or a professor." ^ If, with such a disposition, 
such a passion to learn, cost what it might, the stu- 
dents of mediaeval universities produced nothing mar- 
vellous, the fault lay not with their diligence and 
good will, but with their narrow limitations and 
sterile methods of the instruction given them. 

Moreover, the desire to come in contact with what 
were then the only sources of knowledge was not all 
that drew them to the universities. There were also 
the advantages of every sort guaranteed to them by 
the university privileges; and, above all, the inti- 
mate, affectionate relations which bound them to their 
masters and their comrades in these corporations and 
scholastic societies which were like so many families. 

"The relations that existed between professors 
and students," says Savigny, "were then closer and 
more lasting than in our days.^ Each student, on 
arriving at the university, became not simply a 
new number inscribed on the register of matricula- 
tion; he was thenceforward the pupil, the client of 
such or such a professor, who not only heard his les- 
sons but became his patron, took him under his 
guardianship, and laid claim to him in case some 
prank had led the magistrates to put him into 
prison." ^ In the Faculties of Art more especially, on 

1 Thurot, op. cit., p. 39. 2 Savigny, op. cit., chap, xxi, § 97. 

3 " In the Italian Universities," says Coppi {op. cit., p. 288), 
"pupils and professors formed as it were one large family, because 



268 ABELARD 

account of the slight differences of age existing be- 
tween licentiates of twenty-one, bachelors of fourteen, 
and pupils between ten and thirteen, a real intimacy 
and comradeship was established between masters and 
students. ^' Students and masters belonging to the 
same Nation," says Thurot, " lodged most frequently 
in the same hotel, and often ate at the same table. . . . 
The masters frolicked with the pupils and even took 
part in their disorder." The scholastic community 
as it is found in the colleges of the fifteenth century 
was already in existence, but with the addition of 
liberty. All there was of good in monastic rules, the 
common life of convents, the constant contact between 
many minds devoted to the same work and pursu- 
ing the same end, all the advantages pertaining to 
intellectual association, were to be found in the uni- 
versity, itself a convent after its own fashion, but a 
convent enfranchised and restored to liberty. 

The special character belonging to the universities 
of the Middle Ages is also displayed in the relations 
existing between the students. The young men did 
not then content themselves, as now, with meeting 
each other two or three times a day in the same classes, 
for the sake of listening to the lectures of the same 
professors. They lived the same life. "United by 
profession," said some one, "they could not be dis- 
united by sentiment." They formed associations 
which amounted to mutual benefit societies. At 
Montpellier and elsewhere the corporation relieved 
poor students from the payment of the sums owed by 

they sought the same goal and were united by the same love of 
science and the same habits of life." 



STUDENTS AND TEACHERS 269 

them to the University treasury. The exemption, 
however, was only accorded under condition that the 
same should be afterwards repaid if the student be- 
came rich. If a student could not provide for all his 
needs, could not pay his barber, for example, some one 
came to his assistance. On days of festivity and ban- 
quetings, sick comrades who could not be present were 
not forgotten. At Montpellier, " partridges, pigeons, 
and Muscat wine " were sent to their lodgings, — a 
bad way to cure them, perhaps, but certainly a touch- 
ing mark of companionship. The entire corporation 
was bound to be present at the funeral of any of its 
members, and those who dispensed themselves from 
this obligation without a legitimate excuse were 
fined. ^ 

The students' associations were, then, true schools 
of social solidarity, wherein the young learned their 
duties as men. They practised mutual help, and were 
early penetrated, if not by the national and patriotic 
sentiment, — which had as yet shown itself but dimly, 
and under its worst aspects, the hatred between races 
continuing in the quarrels and rivalries between the 
Nations, — at least by a certain esprit de corps, testified 
to by the solemn oaths taken by the students, them to 
serve and defend the interests of the university, and 
maintain its good repute during and after their studies. 

Another praiseworthy thing about the spirit of the 
medijBval universities was their tendency to establish 

1 At Montpellier when any member of the university died, 
whether professor or student, lessons were suspended, so that every- 
body might be present at the funeral. If the deceased were poor, the 
university paid for his obsequies. 



270 ABELAED 

equality between all their students, no matter what 
might be their birth or condition. Equality before 
the law and in civil society had not yet been reached ; 
but in the university societies a sensible approach to 
equality in studies and degrees had been attained. 
Thence came the efforts made, both in Italy and France, 
to oblige all students to wear the same costume. The 
statutes of the University of Florence decreed that 
every one, barons, dukes, bishops, and cardinals, as 
well as the humblest students, should wear a uniform 
vestment." ^ " In the University of Paris, no distinc- 
tion existed between rich and poor, between nobles 
and commoners. ... In 1311, Clement V put a check 
on the prodigalities of newly made doctors, whose 
admission was celebrated by illuminations and ban- 
quets, by pointing out that these inordinate expenses 
were discouraging and ruinous to poor students."^ 

Still, it would be contrary to truth to suppose that 
these attempts at equality were everywhere crowned 
with success. In many places the privileges of the 
nobility were extended even to the common life of 
the universities. At Dole the students were divided 
into two classes : nobles and commoners. The nobles 
formed a caste apart, and enjoyed certain favors : an 
insult offered one of them cost the insulter five francs, 
while to insult a commoner cost but one franc. On 
the other hand, the nobles were bound by special 
obligations : for example, they must have two valets 
in their service who were to follow them everywhere 

1. . . " etiam si esset Dux, Princeps, vel Baro, . . . etiamsiesset 
Cardinalis, vel Episcopus, vel alia dignitate fulgens (Coppi, op. cit., 
p. 118)." 2 Henri Beaune, op. cit., p. xxxii. 



STUDENTS AND TEACHERS 271 

and carry their books to class. At Bologna, noble 
students had a right to occupy the first benches in 
class. But special charges corresponded to these privi- 
leges ; they paid two francs to the beadles, while the 
other students paid only four sous. 

II 

Nor must we imagine these societies of students, 
above all in the earliest times, as peaceable, perfectly 
well-regulated societies in which an admirable order 
prevailed. As far as scholastic manners are concerned, 
the Middle Ages present two different sides : that of 
extreme license at first, and then toward the end, 
when the scholars had for the most part been shut 
up in colleges and boarding-schools, that of oppressive 
discipline. 

Peace did not always reign in the collegiate cities ; 
dissensions were frequent, and also violent quarrels, 
followed usually it is true, by solemn reconciliations 
which ended in new banquets. Sometimes they arose 
between the students, sometimes between students 
and citizens, and sometimes even between the scholars 
and the masters. Let me cite some examples. 

Discord often prevailed between the Faculties. At 
Montpellier, for instance, the legists, or law students, 
were frequently at variance with the medical students ; 
perpetual quips, a war of pleasantries went on be- 
tween, sometimes ending in a resort to arms.^ Up 

1 It must be added, however, that these incessant divisions may- 
have proceeded partly from the fact that there were two univer- 
sities in that city, the University of Law and the University of 
Medicine. 



272 ABELARD 

to the sixteenth century we find in the Liber Procura- 
toris several mentions of expenditures for weapons 
made in advance by medical students, in order to put 
down by force any legists who might try to assume the 
privilege of ridiculing them.^ 

The professors were not always respected. Thus, 
at Poitiers, in 1517, the Gascon students, sword in. 
hand (although they were forbidden to carry weapons), 
besieged in his chair the professor of law, Longueil, 
who could only defend himself by flinging at their 
heads the enormous volumes of the Digest which were 
the subject of his lessons. 

But it was above all with the inhabitants of the 
cities where the universities were situated that the 
students had frequent quarrels. Though they were 
a source of honor and revenue to the cities in which 
they were established, the universities were sometimes 
viewed with suspicious eyes by the citizens, either on 
account of the privileges granted to their members, 
or because of the great number of foreigners included 
among their pupils. Moreover, by their turbulence 
and arrogance, the students frequently excited the 
antipathy, and even the hostility, of the population. 
Thus, in 1494, at^ Montpellier, the inhabitants sacked 
the College des Douze Medecins. 

No one need be surprised at finding in the youth of 
the Middle Ages the faults common to youth in every 
age. " The student of the University of Paris," says 
M. Lecoy de la Marche, " was not always the serious 

1 Duels between students were all the fashion, as they still are 
in German universities ; it was for that reason they were forbidden 
to carry arms. 



STUDENTS AND TEACHERS 273 

young person, full of zeal for his tasks, bending over 
glossaries of the Bible or of Aristotle. He was also, 
and perhaps one ought to say that he was chiefly, the 
impudent roisterer who ' runs all night, fully armed, 
through the streets of the capital, breaks open house 
doors to. commit outrages, and fills the tribunals with 
the noise of his escapades. Every day,' adds Eobert 
de Sorbon, ' meretriculce came to depose against him, 
complaining of having been struck, of having their 
clothes torn to pieces and their hair cut off.' His 
quarrels with the powerful corporation of the citizens 
of Paris are incessant. The Pre-aux-clercs, where one 
may see the grave students walking with a book in 
their hands, meditating or argumenting in the lan- 
guage of clerics (prout inter bonos scholares est Jieri 
consuetum), is also the theatre of tumultuous scenes." ^ 
The rude manners of the Middle Ages, perhaps, too, 
the scarcity of amusements, the absence of distractions 
which Eabelais, in the sixteenth century, struggled 
against in the students of Poitiers, who " knew not," 
said he, "how to pass the time " ; and still other causes, 
such as the relatively advanced age of many of the 
students, the isolation which made them independent, 
the remoteness of their families,^ — all this contributed 
to develop the tendency to disorder, the turbulent 
humor natural to youth, the quarrelsome disposition 
which often displayed itself in actual riots. The 
students of Paris always had a bone to pick with the 

1 Lecoy de la Marche, op. cit., p. 460. 

2 One special cause of disorder may be found in, the fact that 
students remained at the university seat even during vacations, on 
account of the distances from their homes and the difficulties of 
travelling. 



274 ABELARD 

police, and it was with the most sincere determination 
to keep their word that they hurled this defiance at 
whoever provoked them : '^ Come to the Clos-Bruneau ! 
You'll find some one there to talk to ! " ISTor must 
it be forgotten that the entire university, as guardian 
of each of its members, often took sides openly with 
the most culpable of its students, and encouraged them 
in their resistance to the authorities and magistrates.^ 
At Dole, in 1429, six years after the founding of the 
university, the students fell into all manner of excesses 
and organized a sort of riot. The bailiff ran to re- 
establish order. He was badly beaten and obliged to 
flee. In 1442, the university itself caused the provost 
to be imprisoned. He was set at liberty by order of the 
bailiff of Dijon, who imprisoned, in his turn, the rector 
of D6le. In 1446, the students made common cause 
with the inhabitants of one village against those of 
another, and gave actual battle to their adversaries. 
A hundred years later, in 1563, a quarrel broke out 
between two students in the lecture-room of the course 
of civil law. One of the two received a sword wound ; 
he summoned his adversary before the rector, who let 
him off with a reprimand. In 1577, a murderer was 
acquitted. In 1605, a scholar insulted some children, 
and was put in prison ; his comrades retaliated by in- 
carcerating, the sergeant who had arrested him. The 
tocsin sounded ; the citizens armed and came into the 
street, and fighting was about to begin, when Parlia- 
ment ordered the aldermen to set the scholar at 
liberty.^ 

1 " The audacity and insolence of the students were all the ojreater 
because they felt themselves supported by the university. " Beaune, 
op. cit., p. Ixxxviii. ^ Beaune, oj). cit., imssim. 



STUDENTS AND TEACHERS 275 

The scholastic world of the Middle Ages, then, 
was the scene of constant troubles and agitations, a 
continual ebullition of juvenile passions.^ More than 
•once violent scenes occurred which entailed terrible 
reprisals on the students. Thus at Montpellier, re- 
lates Jourdain, the students made a disturbance in the 
neighborhood of the law school, and wounded several 
persons. " A great uproar ensued. The citizens of 
Montpellier, who had never liked the students over- 
much, determined upon vengeance. The next day, 
when the bell rang, they lay in wait for the rioters as 
they came out of school, and hemmed them into a 
street so narrow that not one of them could, escape. 
In order to distinguish their own countrymen from the 
foreigners, against whom they had a special grudge, 
they obliged each of them to say in their local idiom : 
' God give you good sight, Dieu vous donne bona nioch, 
(bonne nuit). As the strangers were not able to pro- 
nounce the last two words of this evening salutation 
correctly, it was easy to recognize the foreign rioters. 
Several of them were killed and their bodies cast into 
neighboring wells. . . . The name of Eue Bona-nioch 
continues to mark the scene of the bloody drama." ^ 

It was not in riots only that the students of the 
Middle Ages took delight. Gallant and amorous 
adventures played a certain part in their existence. 
" The misfortune is," says the historian of the Univer- 
sity of Angers, "that the morals of the students of 

1 This effervescence sometimes went so far as crime. In 1425 
six or seven law students of Montpellier, in masks, broke into a 
house during the night and carried off a young woman. The uni- 
versity hindered the prosecution of these ravishers, 

2 Germain, ojj. cit., p. 23, 



276 ABELARD 

that age (thirteenth century) were very profligate. 
They fought every day among themselves and with 
the citizens. Yet all of these students were clerics, 
and some of them already provided with curacies. 
But it was not easy to keep this multitude of young 
men, just at the most impetuous age, within the bounds 
of strict discipline ; these were not children who were 
studying. Assembled from different countries, they 
were far from their parents, their bishops, and their 
seigneurs. They had not the same resj)ect for foreign 
masters, to whom they paid a salary, and who were 
often of low birth." ^ And Rangeard concludes by 
recalling, as applicable to the scholars of Angers, the 
very unfavorable portrait drawn by Jacques de Vitry, 
in the thirteenth century, of the morals of Parisian 
students. From the year 1218 the ecclesiastical judge 
of Paris had been complaining of the scholars, who, 
said he, force and break open the doors of houses 
and carry off girls and women." ^ Jacques de Vitry 
denounced the debauched morals of Paris several 
years later. "In the same houses," said he, "there 
are schools on the first story and infamous resorts 
below." ^ If one consults Coppi, for example, he may 
convince himself that the morals of the Italian univer- 
sities were just as bad.'' 

But, in truth, there was nothing in these defects 
which was peculiar to the university youth of the 



1 Pierre Rangeard, Hlstoire de VUniversite d'Amjers, Angers, 
1868, p. 174. Rangeard (1G92-1786) composed this interesting mono- 
graph abont 1720, but it was not published until within a few years. 

2 Crevier, t. i, p. 331. 3 Crevier, t. i, p. 358. 

"* Coppi, op. cit., c. vii, La vita scolastica nel medio evo. 



STUDENTS AND TEACHERS 277 

Middle Ages. Neither was there in the practical 
jokes played by the students on new-comers, bejaunes'^ 
or beginners, as they were called ; nor in the boyish 
tricks and jests of every sort permitted to itself by a 
cosmopolitan yonth, at once serious and dissipated, 
fond of pleasure as well as of study, like youth in 
every age ; nor, in fine, in those habits of idleness 
with which the scholars were sometimes reproached 
by their contemporaries : " How far from the example 
left them by St. Dominic" (a pupil of the University 
of Palencia), " who devoted entire nights to study, are 
these scholars whom the slightest labor disheartens, 
who spend their time drinking in taverns, or build- 
ing castles in the air {castella in Hispania), and who 
transform their class-rooms into dormitories ! " ^ 

A more characteristic trait is the lack of good 
breeding, and it must be owned that the absence, not 
merely of elegance but of cleanliness, was too frequent 
among the students of the Middle Ages. John of 
Salisbury, although so enthusiastic about Paris, wrote 
a little poem entitled De Miseriis Scholasticorum, in 
which he draws a most uncomplimentary portrait of 
their sordid way of life. Privation and poverty were 
doubtless the prime cause of this ; but the prejudices 
of mysticism likewise contributed to it. People still 
believed that solicitude about the care of the body 
and the observance of hygienic rules were of slight 
importance, the care of the soul being all that was 
needful; they thought it permissible and even suit- 

1 Bejaune was at first the name given to a workman who was 
passing his apprenticeship for master or journeyman. 

2 Lecoy cle la Marche, op. cit., p. 163. 



278 ABELARD 

able to lodge knowledge in a filthy body, since exter- 
nal uncleanliness and negligence were no hindrance 
to the elevation of the mind. 

Another thing peculiar to the university regulations 
of the Middle Ages is a certain asceticism which tended 
to prohibit the most lawful pleasures, and which by 
the excessive restraint it put upon the craving for 
amusement which is natural to youth, provoked vio- 
lent reactions. See, for example, what was forbidden 
at Montpellier: "Members of the university are for- 
bidden under penalty of expulsion, to dance anywhere 
except in their own houses. Forbidden, under the 
same penalty, to play dice and other games of chance. 
Forbidden to take part in the fetes of Carnival time, 
when it was customary to throw straw and other 
things at each other." 

It was not by multiplying prohibitions of this kind 
that young men could be prepared for the apprentice- 
ship of liberty; nor was it by recommending them, 
as was done at Paris, to combat their flighty inclina- 
tions by attending sermons and offices, or those evening 
instructions called collations, which had been expressly 
invented in order to keep them from roaming through 
the streets of the great city in search of adventures. 

It is evident that the spirit of the Middle Ages, with 
its tendency to mysticism, its lack of confidence in 
human nature, its universal instinct of repression and 
constraint, was not adapted to discover, in matters of 
discipline, a just medium between license and extreme 
severity. It was decidedly toward severity that it 
leaned when enclosed colleges and boarding-schools 
came to replace the free corporations of students of 



STUDENTS AND TEACHERS 279 

earlier days. Then the rod had full sway. The rod, 
which was the favorite mode of discipline in convents, 
became the great educational instrument in colleges, 
"those jails full of young captives." "Children 
should be brought up to endure severity in all that 
concerns the body," said a general of the Dominicans, 
who fortified his opinion by the precepts of St. Ber- 
nard and Lycurgus. But the fact that the whip was 
in constant use, and for the slightest faults, is not the 
only thing that sheds light on the rigorous discipline 
of the Middle Ages; the nature of the faults thus 
punished does the same thing. The regulations drawn 
up by Gerson, the gentle Gerson, for the Cathedral 
School of Paris, enumerate the chief faults which the 
pupils were liable to commit, and which, moreover, 
their comrades were bound to make known, the giving 
of secret information being then encouraged as a 
legitimate means of discipline.-"^ Here is the list: 
"Speaking French, ^ lyiiig? gi'^ing "the lie, insulting, 
striking, doing or saying immodest things, rising late, 
forgetting to recite the canonical hours, and talking 
in church." 



Ill 



It is much more difficult to form an idea of the ordi- 
nary habits of professors in the early universities, than 
of those of the students. Autobiographies were not in 

1 A pupil who did not denounce the fault of his comrade was pun- 
ished like the guilty one. 

2 Even in 1600, pupils were still forbidden, under severe penalties, 
to speak in their mother tongue. 



280 ABELARD 

fashion in tlie Middle Ages. Absorbed in their pro- 
fessorial duties, the masters of that day did not, as a 
rule, provoke much gossip. They did not mingle in 
society, and were brilliant only in their chairs. "I 
have known," said, in 1444, ^neas Sylvius Picco- 
lomini, the future Pope Pius II, "I have known most 
of the men of letters in our days. They gorge them- 
selves with science, but there is nothing civil or pol- 
ished about them, and they understand absolutely 
nothing about the management of affairs, whether 
public or private." ^ Thence proceeded the first char- 
acteristic of these masters : they were interested ex- 
clusively, for the most part, in instruction ; hardly to 
be called well-bred ; blindly attached to their narrow 
and restricted science ; self-sufficient and intractable, 
generally impervious to new ideas; hostile, in con- 
sequence, to all whose thoughts differed from theirs ; 
thorny with syllogisms ; and worthy, in fine, of that 
reputation for pedantry which history has so justly 
guarded for them. 

These defects had at least one compensation: the 
dignity of a life wholly consecrated to the labor of 
instruction. How many obscure but honorable exist- 
ences slipped peacefully away beneath the shadows of 
the university in the service of youth ! Nevertheless, 
there were frequent errors of conduct. It must not be 
forgotten that, in the Faculty of Arts especially, the 

1 What we are saying here may seem to contradict the role I 
shall assign to the universities a little further on (Chapter II) , from 
the political point of \iew. Note, however, that I am now speaking 
of the professors as a whole, omitting all mention of the brilliant 
exceptions. 



STUDENTS AND TEACHERS 281 

masters were not much older than the scholars.^ Stu- 
dents to-day, they became professors to-morrow, by the 
mere fact of having attained the licentiate's degree. 
Leaving the student ranks and becoming masters in a 
single day, they found some difficulty in shaking off 
the manners of their comrades of the day before. " The 
conduct of the masters, " says Thurot, " resembled that 
of the students." Doubtless there was an advantage 
in that; it enabled them to preserve intimate and 
familiar relations with their pupils. On the other 
hand, the regularity of their lives suffered from it. 
They continued to frequent wineshops, and sometimes 
headed the scholastic riots ; which is proved by the fact 
that at Paris, for example, in 1335, the Nation of 
France admitted that detention in prison would be 
considered as a legitimate excuse for Masters of Arts 
to omit their lectures. 

Another characteristic of the professor of the Mid- 
dle Ages is that he was too dependent on the students. 
How was a man to make his authority respected by 
pupils who perhaps had elected him, and who at all 
events paid him? There was at that time no su- 
perior administration, distinct from the university, 
and supplying it with professors of its own choice. 
The universities recruited themselves, and accordingly 
as they were universities of students as at Bologna, 
or of masters as at Paris, it was now the students, and 
again the masters in the exercise of their functions, who 

1 Nor must it be forgotten that the Masters of Arts often remained 
students, after becoming professors, and followed the courses of the 
Theological Faculty. 



282 ABE LARD 

chose the new professors. ^ "At Bologna, " says Savigny, 
" there were very soon public chairs, paid for by the 
city. The city supplied the funds, but the choice of 
professors was left to the students. The election was 
for a year only, and the professors were not often 
re-elected. Doctors were nearly always chosen, but 
this was not an indispensable condition ; many of these 
professors are found who had not the doctor's title." ^ 

The masters were, furthermore, dependent on the 
students for the payment of their honoraries. " In the 
Faculty of Arts at Paris," says Thurot, "these honor- 
aries were extremely variable. The sum was fixed by 
a free contract between master and pupil. Toward 
1309, those who gave the morning instruction (the 
professors of ordinary lessons) charged each pupil 
one franc. In 1450, masters demanded a crown for 
the explanation and repetition of the books required 
for the baccalaureate.^ There were no general rules 
at Bologna. Sometimes a sum was fixed for which 
the students as a body were held responsible. Some- 
times each student was obliged to pay a specified 
sum. 

In the earliest times there was no question of regu- 
lar appointments and salaries paid from the public 
treasury, except in the case of certain universities 
generously supported and indorsed by the heads of 
the State. By degrees, however, there appeared, at 

1 In certain universities, Toulouse for example, a mixed system was 
pursued. The professors were elected there by the Masters in Exer- 
cise, and by several students associated with the regents as coun- 
sellors. 

2 Savigny, op. cit., chap, xxi, § 83. ^ Thurot, op, cit., p. 61. 



STUDENTS AND TEACHERS 283 

least for a certain number of chairs, the custom of 
fixed salaries, drawn either from the general revenues 
of the university, the municipal treasury, or the lib- 
erality of princes.^ Thus, at Montpellier, about the 
year 1500, the emoluments of the professors of medi- 
cine amounted to one hundred livres, those of the 
professors of law to fifty livres, while the professors 
of the Faculty of Arts had only thirty livres. At 
Bologna, where j)6ople were richer, the salaries of 
jurists varied from fifty to nearly five hundred livres. 
These were exceptions. In the majority of the 
universities, especially in the Faculties of Arts, pro- 
fessors continued to receive the fees for their instruc- 
tion directly from the pupils. "The University of 
Paris, " said one of its rectors at the beginning of the 
eighteenth century, "finds itself reduced to the sad 
necessity of demanding a mean and miserable sum from 
its scholars in order to maintain its masters." The 
result of this dependence on pupils was, as one can 
imagine, a tendency on the part of professors to dis- 
play indulgence and to lower the requirements for pass- 
ing the examinations, so as neither to discourage the 
students nor expose themselves to the loss of patron- 
age. In 1412, a rector of Montpellier called the 
doctors of the Faculty of Law to order for their 
deplorable laxity in conferring degrees. Poorer uni- 
versities acquired a sorry reputation for excessive 

1 "In the fourteenth century at Bologna," says Savigny, "the 
majority of the professors were already salaried by the city, and the 
custom of paying all of them was soon established. Thenceforward, 
also, the professoriat was considered as a public function, wliich it 
had not been before " (02^. cit., chap, xxi, § 89). 



284 ABELAKD 

laxity; the graduates of the University of Orange, 
for instance, were nicknamed " Orange-flower doctors ! 
Docteurs (I lajleur d'orange!^^ 

As a rule, the universities of the Middle Ages re- 
mained poor institutions, with but moderate resources 
at their disposal. Historians have long adduced, as 
a proof of the special opulence of the College of Sor- 
bonne, its exclusive ownership of fifteen silver forks 
and spoons. In the fourteenth century, the rector 
and masters of the Paris Faculty of Arts, when dunned 
for the payment of a university debt, requested a delay 
in these terms: ''We, whose profession it is to have 
no riches, have difficulty in finding money for the sal- 
aries of the procurators and advocates whom our suits 
oblige us to employ." The University of Paris, how- 
ever, glories in its poverty. "Opportunities to be- 
come opulent have not been wanting in its histor}^," 
said one of its rectors, in 1715. "But it has remained 
disinterested; it knows the worth of an honest and 
modest poverty."^ 

It is none the less true that poverty weighed heavily 
on the individuals who composed the universities, and 
that the need of money explains the exactions into 
which many and many a professor allowed himself to 
be drawn. At Bologna the doctors were richer, yet 
occasionally one finds them lending money to their 
pupils in the same covetous spirit, in order to augment 
their honoraria and exact all the more because they 

1 Jonrdain, Histoire de VUniversite de Paris, p. 330. " The Uni- 
versity of Paris," says Vallet de Viriville, " notwitlistanding its 
greed {son esprit fiscal) and its exactions, never got anytliing for 
itself, as an institution, but poverty. 



STUDENTS AND TEACHERS 285 

had made these advances. But this love of gain, if it 
was perhaps more excusable, was certainly more keen 
and more developed among the poor professors whose 
only means of support was to levy on the students. 

Another defect in the social status of the profes- 
sors of the Middle Ages was the celibacy absolutely 
imposed on them by the regulations. In principle, the 
law of celibacy was universal, and applied to all grad- 
uates indiscriminately. It was permissible to be a 
layman, but on condition that the layman voluntarily 
submitted to the rules of the religious state. Up to 
1407, Bachelors in Arts presenting themselves for the 
license had to take oath that they were not married, 
in order to obtain this degree. It was not until 1452 
that the medical professors, and in 1500 the legal pro- 
fessors, attached to the Faculties, were authorized to 
marry. ^ As to the Masters of Arts, they never obtained 
this authorization, not even in the eighteenth century. 
Is it necessary to say what these lay celibates must 
have needed in order to become true educators ? With- 
out a doubt, the university teachers of the Middle Ages 
were devoted masters who, before entering on their 
functions, had taken, between the hands of their rec- 
tors, high-sounding oaths by which they bound them- 
selves to labor for the welfare of the university, to 
observe the statutes and regulations, and to fulfil all 
their duties, and who, let us believe, generally kept 
these promises. But who does not comprehend that 

1 In 1331, Pope John XXII authorized a married professor to teach 
in the Faculty of Medicine at Paris. It was an exception. The 
jurists of Bologna were relieved from the obligation of celibacy- 
earlier than those of Paris. 



286 ABELARD 

their spirit would have been enlarged, their authority 
augmented, and their pedagogic influence increased 
if, to their other qualities, they had joined that of 
being fathers of families? Can one believe, for ex- 
ample, that the rude and severe discipline of the rod 
would have been kept up so long in the schools, if the 
masters of these schools had had their own children 
as pupils? 



CHAPTER II 

EXTERNAL INFLUENCE OF THE UNIVERSITIES AND 
THEIR SPIRIT OF FREEDOM 

I. The universities as a public force — Political and social influence 
— Domination of the University of Paris — Democratic rules 
of university organization — The habit of perpetual argumen- 
tation a preparation for political action — Commentaries on the 
Politics of Aristotle — Intervention in public affairs — Politi- 
cal philosophy — Clamor for reforms — Conception of a paternal 
government — Intervention in ecclesiastical affairs — Other uni- 
versities — National character — German universities — II. Spirit 
of liberty in the old universities — Free language toward the 
Popes themselves — Some examples of independent and bold 
opinions — Beginnings of a new spirit — More liberal methods of 
study recommended by Robert de Sorbon — Protests against the 
discipline of the rod — Preparations for a new era — Decay of the 
mediaeval universities — Conclusion. 



A VAST subject, and one that might well furnish the 
subject of a special volume, is that of the influence of 
the mediaeval universities, the part they played in the 
history of the human mind, and the political and social 
action power that they exercised. 

To see in them mere associations of masters and 
pupils, exclusively confined to studies, would be to 
judge them incorrectly. They were one of the great 
public forces of the Middle Ages. Sole depositaries 
of the lofty speculations of thought at a time when 

287 



288 ABELARD 

academies and other learned bodies were not in exist- 
ence, when neither books, journals, nor reviews, were 
published, — since the art of printing had not yet been 
invented, — they represented public opinion, not alone 
in scientific matters, but in great political and ecclesi- 
astical questions as well. Permanent centres of propa- 
ganda and action when no regularly constituted political 
assemblies existed, or when the States-General, as in 
France, assembled only at remote intervals, they were 
destined to acquire considerable influence. 

This is especially true of the University of Paris. 
"The authority of the University of Paris," said 
Pasquier, " has risen to such a height that it is neces- 
sary to satisfy it, no matter on what conditions."^ 
Another contemporary attests the same fact. "The 
university men of these days want to meddle with 
everything." And again: "The said University had 
great power at Paris, so much so that when it un- 
dertook any affair it was bound to bring it to a con- 
clusion; it wanted to meddle with the government of 
the Pope, the King, and everything else." ^ 

With history in our hands, everybody must agree 
that the exuberant activity of the universities caused 
them constantly to overstep the ordinary limits of 
mere educational institutions. We see the univer- 
sities intimately blended with national life. When 
Philip Augustus had just triumphed at Bouvines over 
the English and German coalition, he wrote to the 
students of Paris: "Praise God, my very dear ones, 

1 ;^tienne Pasquier, Rect. de la France, III, chap. xxix. 

2 Quoted by Coville, Les Cabochiens et Vordonnance de 1413, Paris, 
Hacliette, 1888, p. 117. 



INFLUENCE OF UNIVERSITIES 289 

for we have never escaped so grave a danger." Thus 
he associates the university with the victory of France. 
Later on, from the schools of Orleans, Toulouse, and 
■ Montpellier, come forth those legal knights (chevaliers 
^s lois),^ all panoplied in Roman law, who struggle 
valiantly against feudalism and assure the progress of 
the Third-Estate. They fill the Parliament, they figure 
in the States-General; we find them surrounding Ste- 
phen Marcel, and again among the authors of the great 
Ordinance of the Eeformation of 1413. The univer- 
sities then appeared wholly penetrated by the demo- 
cratic spirit; they were considered one of the organs 
of public opinion in Europe ; in great crises, like the 
Schism of the West, appeal was made to their inter- 
vention. ^ "To tell the truth, they did not wait for it 
to be asked; they intervened of themselves." 

It has been very justly remarked that by their repub- 
lican organization, and the character of their instruction 
and methods of study, the universities were well fitted 
to play a part in politics. On one hand, the exercise 
of the elective power, and the frequency of delibera- 
tive assemblies, whether of Nations and Faculties, or 
of the general assembly of the university, were all 
democratic acts which prepared the universities for a 
certain liberty of spirit, held them back from passive 
obedience, and, in a word, accustomed them in advance 

1 Professors of Law, at Montpellier, for example, were considered 
as Knights of Law. After twenty years' practice they became Counts. 
Jacques Rahuffi, the famous professor of the fifteenth century, is 
styled Count of Laws in his epitaph. At Aix, on receiving a doctor- 
ate in law, it was said to him: "Te comiteni et nobilem facimus." 

2 Bayet, Rector of the Academy of Lille, Discours de Eentree des 
Facidtes, 1891. 



200 ABELARD 

to political action. On the other hand, the habit of 
incessant argumentation ; of discussing the pros and 
cons of every question ; the exclusively oral character 
of instruction in all grades, — all these causes combined 
to form numerous debaters and orators among both 
students and masters, encouraged them to have an opin- 
ion on all subjects, and to put it forward in the assem- 
blies. " Thence arose," says M. Coville, " an inevitable 
disposition to talk about everything, discuss every- 
thing, intervene in everything."^ 

That the University of Paris had its own ideas and 
its political doctrine is indubitable. Following Aris- 
totle, the theologians of the Middle Ages had freely 
discussed the constitution of states. In 1307, Siger 
de Brabant read and commented on the Politics of the 
Greek philosopher at Paris. Thomas Aquinas had 
composed the De Regimine principium, and the De 
eruditione principium. His disciple, Gilles de Kome, 
Archbishop of Bourges, who was tutor to Philip the 
Fair, also followed Aristotle in politics, and talked, 
like him, of an intermediate class between the nobles 
and the villeins, and of its importance in the state. 

There is no room for surprise, therefore, at the uni- 
versities taking part in political agitations. The great 
Cabochien ordinance of 1413, one of the best adminis- 
trative reforms of old France, was the joint work of 
the municipal body and the university.^ But how 
many other examples could be cited of university inter- 
ference in state affairs? I add several, but with no 

1 See in the already cited work of M. Coville, the chapter entitled: 
rUniversite de Paris au XV^ Steele. 

2 Augustin Thierry, Histoire du Tiers-Etat, p. 60, 



INFLUENCE OF UNIVERSITIES 291 

thought of exhausting the list. In 1316, the Univer- 
sity of Paris recognized Philip V as the legitimate 
king. In the time of Stephen Marcel, about 1350, 
•it intervened to re-establish peace : " It negotiated, it 
obliged its clients to arm, it sent a deputation to the 
Dauphin, who was regent of the kingdom." In 1374, 
"the rectors and several masters of theology, doctors 
of law, and other wise clerics of the university," con- 
curred with the bishops in establishing the act which 
fixed fourteen years as the age when kings attain their 
majority. In 1405, the Duke of Burgundy, then all- 
powerful in the kingdom, daily consulted the univer- 
sity on the most secret affairs. " In 1409, the university 
takes an active share in the great labor of reforming 
the finances. It sends ambassadors to the Duke of 
Orleans and the Duke of Berry ; it is formally received 
by the King in the green chamber, and permitted to 
expose its grievances and its plans. The King him- 
self, in 1411, entreats its assistance, writes long letters 
to it concerning the state of the realm, and entreats it 
to grant him aid and comfort. " Nor does this partici- 
pation of the university in affairs of state come to an 
end in less troublous times, when order is re-estab- 
lished. In 1465, Louis XI summons to his Council 
six members of Parliament, six citizens of Paris, and 
six members of the university. The university is 
really an order in the state, and its political powers 
decrease and disappear only with the progress of abso- 
lute monarchy. In 1614 it still addressed remon- 
strances to the States-General; they were its last, 
however. 

The University of Paris did not employ the politi- 



292 ABELARD 

cal power it was so proud of in making opposition to 
royalty. Barring a few slight symptoms of insubor- 
dination to the royal will, it always remained the 
docile child, " the eldest daughter " of the monarchy. 
In 1557, Henry II, who had, nevertheless, some grounds 
of complaint against it, praised it publicly, "for its 
fidelity in upholding the maxims of obedience due 
to kings from their subjects." Yet I would not 
affirm that the members of the university never 
irritated and annoyed princes by the warnings they 
gave them, by their zeal in demanding reforms, and, 
above all, by the ideal conception of monarchy they 
had formed, and which they constantly set forth in 
their writings and discourses. Just as Louis XIV 
afterwards treated Fenelon as a "fanciful person," 
because he dreamed of perfection in royalty, so these 
kings of the older monarchy must have more than 
once regarded these university theorizers in politics 
as annoying dreamers, full of beautiful chimeras, who 
demanded all sorts of virtues from kings, reminded 
them of the example of " Monsieur St. Louis, " and, in 
a word, were bent on the " religious and ecclesiastical 
dream of sanctity on the throne." Such, for example, 
at the opening of the fifteenth century, was Eobert 
Courte-Cuisse, pupil, and afterwards famous master of 
the College of Navarre, grand-almoner to the King, 
and a greatly esteemed orator, who said: "The King 
should be to his people like a father to his son." 
"The King ought to consider the general welfare 
only," and who thus commented Aristotle's maxim: 
"Princes are paramount in things not determined by 
the laws, but in the laws themselves, 7io.^" Such 



INFLUENCE OF UNIVERSITIES 293 

again was Gerson, who, like Thomas Aquinas, ad- 
mitted the right of insurrection against vicious and 
tyrannical kings. "One may judge a tyrannical 
seigneur," said he, "if he is a sinner in several cases: 
and finally, this rule of law may be applied against 
him: vbn vi repeUere licet." But what Gerson espe- 
cially desired and hoped for was, that education in the 
first place, and afterwards the enlightenment of wise 
counsels, would aid the prince to amend himself and 
become the father of his people. These disciplined 
but independent spirits, although profoundly respect- 
ful toward constituted authorities, were yet far from 
dissimulating and holding their peace concerning the 
impression made on them by the real miseries and vices 
of their age. The same Gerson who would have desired 
to reform the character of kings, dared to write con- 
cerning the Papacy : " The Court of Eome has created 
a thousand of&ces in order to obtain gold; but hardly 
is one discoverable for the cultivation of virtue. 
Nothing is talked of there from morning to night but 
armies, lands, cities, and money; barely or never do 
they speak of chastity, alms, justice, fidelity, and good 
morals." 

The University of Paris meddled in religious quar- 
rels as well as in political ones. Under this head, a 
historian has brilliantly summed up the part it played 
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries : " This vast 
corporation which represents divine and human science, 
cannot confine itself within the limits of its lessons 
and examinations, nor remain a stranger to great exte- 
rior events. , If it speaks, it knows what weight will 
attach to its opinion, and how many faithful adherents 



294 ABELARD 

it will find to support and defend it. We see it busied 
with, and taking an interest in, everything; but, 
above all, in the affairs of the Church. It is the epoch 
of the great Schism of the West, and never has there 
been such an occasion to display the power and activity 
of the University of Paris : it inquires into the power 
of the Schismatical Popes; it causes them to be 
attacked, ill-treated, and condemned by its orators; 
it draws up interminable writings, audacious both 
in matter and form; ... it appeals to the future 
Pope; with the concurrence of the king, it prepares 
and consummates an act of the greatest gravity, the 
withdrawal of the Church of France from Benedict 
XIII, the Avignon Pope, whom it had recognized until 
then, but who would not yield to its requests and 
exigencies; ... it suggests the reunion of National 
Councils to the King, in 1393, 1394, 1398, and 1400; 
there it manages all the debates ; it presides at the tear- 
ing up of pontifical bulls ; finally, it is the soul of the 
General Council which was to restore peace and unity 
to the Church after a disturbance of more than thirty 
years — the Council of Pisa, in 1409 ; it is represented 
there by a formal embassy ; more than eighty votes are 
cast by its members; and the new and only Pope, 
Alexander V, has been not only one of its pupils but 
one of its masters."-^ Though it had not always the 
same brilliancy the ecclesiastical role of the University 
of Paris has, nevertheless, always been considerable ; 
and the popes have always reckoned with the Sorbonne. 
Assuredly the other universities have not played a 
role equally important; above all, they did not play 
1 Coville, op. cit., p. 117. 



INFLUENCE OF UNIVERSITIES 296 

one so soon. It was only in the seventeenth century 
(in 1603) that Oxford and Cambridge were invested 
with the right they still have, of returning members 
to the British Parliament. It was well on in the six- 
teenth century when Henry VIII consulted the Uni- 
versity of Salamanca concerning his divorce from 
Catherine of Aragon. But, sooner or later, accord- 
ing to circumstances, all the universities have had 
their day of political or religious influence. The 
Italian universities seem to be the ones which with- 
drew most into the isolation of study and speculation. 
But Louvain, in Belgium, has been one of the fortresses 
of Catholicism. Oxford has been Eoyalist and Jacobite 
by turns, and remains Tory.^ I have pointed out 
elsewhere that it was with a view to national consoli- 
dation that the kings founded the Universities of 
Poitiers, Caen, Bordeaux, and Douai. 

In Germany particularly, the universities have had 
a marked tendency to become centres of political and 
religious action. "The German universities," says 
M. Lavisse, "have always mingled actively in the 
national life, since the day when the first of them was 
founded at Prague, in the fourteenth century, on the 
model of the flourishing school of Paris. Never have 
institutions imported from abroad flourished better or 
thrust deeper roots into a new soil. The universities 
began to play a part by the fifteenth century ; there 
the new ideas that are agitating minds seek shelter 

1 It was to make headway against Oxford, the centre of Toryism, 
that the Whig party founded the University of London in 1828. It 
was to struggle against the preponderating Catholic influence at 
Louvain that the Belgian Liberals founded the University of Brussels 
in 1834. 



296 ABELARD 

against persecution ; when the time arrives, they recruit 
arms and intelligences there for their defence. In the 
sixteenth century, the universities are the battle fields : 
Luther's cry of revolt issues from Wittenberg; there, 
and at the same time, the fathers of the new church 
are formed, and the first masters who, carrying into 
science a liberty of spirit disenthralled from tradition, 
discovered new horizons for it. Nevertheless, Catholi- 
cism, surprised at first, defends itself vigorously, and 
with the very arms by which it is attacked. Both 
parties found new universities or reform old ones. 
Luther thinks that there is no work more worthy of a 
pope or an emperor, or, to translate him more exactly, 
that 'nothing is more pontifical nor more imperial ' 
than a good reform of the universities." ^ 



II 

This external influence of the universities, which ra- 
diates throughout all society, would be inexplicable if 
the universities had not been intrinsic centres of intel- 
lectual development, truly active and living scholastic 
institutions. AYhatever judgment may be formed of 
the instruction given by them, it must not be forgotten 
that they alone gave any ; that they had the monopoly 
of studies; and that almost no one arrived at high 
ecclesiastical dignities, or important positions in the 

iLavisse, La fondation de rUniversite de Berlin (Revue des 
Deux Mondes, May 15, 187G). In this article M. Lavisse points ont 
that in founding tlie National University of Berlin, in 1810, directly 
after its disasters, Germany sought a means of arising after its mili- 
tary and political downfall, by instituting a new organ of intellectual 
force. 



INFLUENCE OF UNIVERSITIES 297 

state, witliout passing through them. One can imag- 
ine what must have been the prestige and power of 
these schools, which had such an excellent cUenUle 
throughout the world, which trained future bishops 
and popes, as well as the counsellors of lay princes 
which peopled the Church and the royal and imperial 
courts with their pupils, and gave preceptors to the 
heirs-presumptive of crowns. The universities were 
the privileged source whence in those days emerged 
all whose knowledge gave them admission to the 
ruling classes. 

Hence we must not be surprised at finding the uni- 
versities of the Middle Ages frequently expressing 
their opinions with the hardihood and even arrogance 
of free and independent corporations, and not with the 
timidity and humility befitting schools absolutely 
dependent on Church and State. The University of 
Paris, however much attached to the Church, did not 
spare the bishops, or even the popes. It let pass no 
occasion to assert its rights. Were they liegemen of 
the clergy, those university men of 1330 or there- 
abouts, who declared that the Bishop of Paris, Hugues 
de Besangon, was cut off from the academic body for 
having broken the oath taken in his youth, when a 
student of the Faculty of Decretal, an oath of de- 
votion to the privileges of the university, by con- 
demning to a fine a student guilty of, rape? Were 
they the humble servants of the Papacy, those theo- 
logians who, towards the end of the fourteenth 
century, wrote, in a letter to the Pope of Avignon a 
. letter which Clement Y I thought full of venom : " Let 
the pastors do their duty ; as for us, we shall do ours. 



298 ABELARD 

... It is of small consequence how many popes 
there are ; two, three, ten if yon like : each kingdom 
can have its own ! '* 

Nor was it in the domain of practical affairs only 
that the universities displayed their independence. It 
is indisputable that in certain universities a real lib- 
erty of spirit made itself felt, in spite of the uniformity 
of studies and the rigidity of methods. M. Eenan 
does not hesitate to affirm, in his book on Averroes, 
that " the opuscules of Albertus Magnus and of Thomas 
Aquinas contra Averroistas were directly aimed at the 
professors of the rue du Eouarre." Assuredly the 
majority of the masters were orthodox, and followed 
the traditional doctrines with docility. Then, theo- 
logical professors in especial, were all Thomists. But 
close beside this obedient and faithful multitude there 
were independent and adventurous minds. The spirit 
of free examination had already its adepts. Whom 
could the condemnations and excommunications pro- 
nounced, between 1240 and 1270^^ against a free and 
audacious philosophy have had in view, at a time when 
the university had a monopoly, not merely of instruc- 
tion, but of thought and speculation, if not members 
of the university themselves? Abelard's method bore 
its fruits, and the emancipated reason already venti- 
lated the most daring questions, and accepted the most 
novel solutions; for example, such as these: "The 
world is eternal — Human actions are not governed by 
Divine Providence — One knows nothing more after 
having learned theology — There are fables and errors 
in the Christian law as in all other laws — Philoso- 

1 Chartularium Univ. Paris., t. i, pp. 170, 480. 



INFLUENCE OF UNIVERSITIES 290 

phers are the only sages — The creation of the world 
is an impossible thing." The mere fact that proposi- 
tions like these could have attracted the attention of 
the ecclesiastical power and provoked its anathema, 
demonstrates that they were wide-spread, and were 
inculcated: and where could they be so, I repeat, if 
not in. the universities? Moreover, a contemporary 
testimony, that of a Friar-Preacher of Paris, named 
Gilles, leaves no room for doubt. Toward the close 
of the thirteenth century, this monk propounded to 
Albertus Magnus, inviting him either to refute or to 
contest them, eleven propositions analogous to those 
just cited, adding that " they were taught in the schools 
by the masters of Paris, and by those who are esteemed 
the most learned in philosophy." ^ 

" The orthodoxy of the Middle Ages, " says Thurot, 
"was reconcilable with a liberty that even seems 
excessive. The custom of not deciding until after 
having considered the pros and cons, and the obliga- 
tion to consider all objections, gave the mind the habi- 
tudes of liberty. Men made a boast of not relying on 
the authority of Scripture, but employing nothing but 
mere argument. . . . They felt obliged to explain 
everything; they preferred new and hazardous doc- 
trines to those that were truer, but appeared super- 
annuated. They scorned what seemed too clear. " ^ It 
follows that the period of the Middle Ages, even from 
the doctrinal point of view, was far from being an 
epoch of blind servility and absolute traditionalism.^ 

1 Renan, Averroes, etc., p. 214. 2 Thurot, op. cit., p. 161. 

3 Compare this appreciation by M. Bayet, in the discourse already 
cited: " It must not be believed that the scientific spirit was entirely 



300 ABELARD 

So too, we must not believe that the methods of 
instruction were wholly reduced to the mechanism of 
the syllogism and mere verbal formalities. A proof 
to the contrary may be found in a recently published 
passage from the inedited works of the founder of the 
Sorbonne. Robert de Sorbon recommended to the 
scholar who desired to make progress in his studies, 
the observation of six essential rules, which he sum- 
marized thus : 

1. To devote a certain hour to a given lesson, as St. 
Bernard had already counselled ; 

, 2. To fix his attention on what he has just read and 
not pass over it lightly : " between reading and study, " 
said St. Bernard again, "there is the same difference 
as between a guest and a friend ; between a salutation 

lacking in these old universities, nor that they were confined to the 
study of theology. In their own fashion they desired to extend and 
co-ordinate all knowledge, and never, perhaps, has man had a prouder 
confidence in the puissance of reasoning. They were not content to 
reason merely: men lived in these schools who foresaw the methods 
of observation and experiment which are the glory of our century. 
The English monk, Roger Bacon, in the thirteenth century spent 
long years in the University of Paris, where he was the pupil of a 
certain Pierre de Maucoint to whom he gives the fine title of ' Master 
of Experiments, Dominus experimentorum.' When he wished to 
determine the principles of science, he wrote : ' There are three ways 
of arriving at truth : authority, which can only produce faith, and 
must, moreover, justify itself in the eye of reason ; reasoning, the 
most certain conclusions of which leave somewhat to be desired, 
unless one verifies them ; and, finally, experiment, which suffices by 
itself.' And he insists on this fact, that ' above all the speculative 
sciences and the arts, there is the science of making experiments 
which shall not be incomplete and feeble.' Roger Bacon speaks the 
same language that one listens to again in his homonym of the 
seventeenth century, and certainly Claude Bernard himself has not 
spoken more confidently of the excellence of experimental methods." 



INFLUENCE OF UNIVERSITIES 301 

exchanged with a passer-by in the street and an inti- 
mate and unchangeable affection " ; 

3. To extract from his daily reading some one 
thought or truth, and engrave it on his memory with 
especial care, as prescribed by Seneca; 

4. To write a summary of what he has read; for 
words which are not confided to writing vanish like 
dust before the wind ; 

5. To confer with his fellow pupils, either in the 
disputationes, or in familiar conversations ; this exer- 
cise is still more advantageous than reading, for its 
effect is to clear up all doubts and obscurities ; 

6. Finally, to pray, which, according to St. Bernard, 
is one of the best means to learn. ^ 

These pedagogic rules certainly bear the imprint 
of their age, since they end in extolling a mystical 
process prayer, and celebrate the benefits arising from 
discussion, that favorite method of the Middle Ages. 
But do they not also bear witness to a new spirit when 
they recommend meditation, that is to say, personal 
effort, prolonged and patient thought? To these stu- 
dents of the thirteenth century, crushed under a flood 
of words and an avalanche of dogmas, who left the ordi- 
nary lesson only to pass at once into the extraordi- 
nary one, who had no time to straighten out or pull 

1 Inedited passage from Robert de Sorbon, quoted by M. Lecoy de 
la Marche, op. cit., p. 453. " A professor whose school was full was 
asked : ' What do you do to achieve such a great success ? ' — ' It Is 
very simple,' he replied smiling, * God studies for me. I merely go 
to Mass, and when I come back I know by that all I ought to 
teach'" (Ibid., p. 455). It would be difficult to expect much of 
the scientific spirit from men who were nourished on these pious 
prejudices. 



i^ 



302 ABELARD 

themselves together, so bent were they under perpetual 
dictations, and whose minds never regained elasticity- 
save in complying with the mechanical and routine 
discipline of syllogistic reasoning, Kobert de Sorbon 
opened the way to individual thought; he invited them 
to reflect, to choose, to study for themselves, and thus 
to return to the lost sources of originality. And the in- 
tention of our author becomes plain when, long before the 
critics of the Eenaissance,he gibes at the wretched intel- 
lectual habits of the students of his time, who thought 
they had done all they could when they had filled their 
copy-books with notes. "Not to seem as if they had 
lost their time," said he, "they collect leaves of parch- 
ment, make thick volumes of them, with plenty of 
blank spaces on the inside, and bind them elegantly in 
red leather; then they return to the paternal mansion 
with a little bag c: immed full of science but with a 
mind completely empty." An " empty mind " — was 
not that the characteristic of an intelligence exercised 
in purely formal studies, inured to abstract processes 
of reasoning, but shut away from all positive knowl- 
edge concerning the past of humanity and the nature 
of the world? And if it was not given to Eobert de 
Sorbon to correct the faults which he defined so 
clearly, at least we owe him thanks for having pointed 
them out, and, at the same time, as it is permissible to 
think, for having inspired a certain number of his con- 
temporaries with his more comprehensive and reason- 
able way of understanding study. 

So too, finally, in matters of discipline, it happened 
more than once in the height of the Middle Ages, that 
certain minds in advance of their times, protested 



INFLUENCE OF UNIVERSITIES 303 

against the use of corporal cliastisements, and demanded 
gentler and more liberal regulations. Such was Gerson 
who, in his opusculum de Farvulis ad Christum tralien- 
dis, enjoined the masters to have a fatherly tenderness 
for their pupils, and interdicted the employment of the 
rod. Such also was St. Anselm, whose often quoted 
protest is well known : " Day and night, " said an abbot 
to him, "we do not cease to chastise the children 
confided to our care, and they grow worse and worse." 
Anselm replied : " Indeed ! You do not cease to chastise 
them ! And when they are grown up what will they 
become? Idiotic and stupid. A fine education that, 
which makes brutes of men! ... If you were to 
plant a tree in your garden, and were to enclose it on 
all sides so that it could not extend its branches, what 
would you find when, at the end of several years, you 
set it free from its bonds? A tiee whose branches 
would be bent and crooked; and would it not be your 
fault, for having so unreasonably confined it?" 

Thus there was forming in the very bosom of the 
routine university, a party of the future, already in 
possession of the ideas which became the common- 
places of the pedagogy of the Renaissance. Here and 
there amid the writings of the university men of the 
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we find the germ 
from which the modern spirit has developed. It must 
be thoroughly recognized, however, that this evolution 
took place outside of the old universities although they 
prepared the way for it; it took place in opposition to 
them., by virtue of that fatal law which forbids old 
institutions to reform themselves, and which condemns 
them to decline and disappear when their time has 



304 ABELARD 

come, and the needs which they originally supplied 
have given place to other requirements. Born at an 
epoch when the only question was to preserve the 
deposit of traditional beliefs, the universities were not 
armed for the conquests of science. Hence, after days 
of brilliancy and glory, came years and centuries of 
obscurity. "The ancient universities," has said an 
historian of the sciences, M. Biot, " were in the eigh- 
teenth century several centuries in arrears of all that 
concerns sciences and the arts. Peripatetics when all 
the world had renounced the philosophy of Aristotle 
with Descartes, they became Cartesians when the rest 
were Newtonians. That is the way with learned 
bodies which do not make discoveries." 

But although they have not had the privilege, refused 
to all human institutions, scholastic or other, of brav- 
ing the onslaught of time and of being founded for 
eternity, the old universities of the Middle Ages have, 
nevertheless, rendered immense services. To demon- 
strate this, it would suffice to draw up the list of their 
illustrious professors and pupils. It was not merely 
theologians and churchmen that they formed ; it was 
also literary men and poets ; a Petrarch, whom we have 
seen studying at Bologna and Montpellier ; a Dante who 
had visited the schools of the rue du Fouarre. The 
very men who have attacked and depreciated them 
issued from their schools and were indebted to them, 
in part at any rate, for their knowledge. Erasmus 
studied at the College of Montaigu in Paris ; Montaigne 
was a pupil of the College of Guyenne, a dependency 
of the Faculty of Arts at Bordeaux; Kabelais had 
frequented almost all the French universities ; Calvin 



INFLUENCE OF UNIVERSITIES 305 

was a student of Orleans and Bourges ; Bacon studied 
at the University of Cambridge. 

But let us not dwell solely on the famous masters or 
illustrious students who have been the glory of the uni- 
versities. Think of those thousands of obscure men, 
those successive generations of masters, who patiently 
tilled the field of science. They sowed, it is quite 
possible, only an inferior sort of grain: they knew 
neither good processes of tillage nor good methods of 
scattering seed! But at least, their labor and inces- 
sant efforts kept the ground in a state of cultiva- 
tion ; they did not permit it to lie fallow ; they did not 
leave the fields of thought to be overrun by thorns and 
briars. One may say what he likes of their sterile 
tasks and wasted pains. They commented, commented, 
commented. They invented nothing. They ground 
away at the empty mill of dialectic! They wore 
themselves out in subtleties, in fine distinctions, in 
quibblings. A single experiment in chemistry or 
modern physics, a solitary physiological or anatomical 
observation does more service to humanity than their 
enormous folios. But none the less, they have de- 
served well from science by making ready for the 
future, by rendering possible the rich harvests of the 
sixteenth and succeeding centuries. In the chain of 
humanity's successive progress they have been a link, 
a ring, less brilliant perhaps, but as solid as the others, 
as necessary as any for the transmission of the intel- 
lectual and moral current of the spiritual life. And 
the proof that their work has not been wrought in 
vain, that the scholastic organism, of which they were 
the springs, was not unworthy to live, is that, even 



306 ABELARD 

to-day, in all civilized countries, in young America 
as in old Europe, men labor to maintain and develop 
where they exist already, and to create or revive where 
they have disappeared, the universities of modern 
times, inheritors of the name, and, in many respects, 
worthy representatives of the traditions of those of 
the Middle Ages. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Wo7'ks relating to the general history of universities 

P. Heinrich Denifle, Die Entsteheung der Universitdten des 
Mittelalters bis 1400, erster Band, Berlin, 1885. 

F. C. de Savigny, GescMchte des romischen Bechts im Mitteh 
alter. 6 vols. 1815-1831. 

Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de V Instruction puhlique en 
Europe. 1 vol. Paris, 1849. 

Henry Maiden, Oji the Origin of Universities. 1 vol. Lon- 
don, 1835. 

Laurie, Lectures on the Bise and Early Constitution of 
Universities. 1 vol. London, 1886. 

Meiners, GescMchte der Entstehung und Entwickelung der 
hohen schulen unsers Erdtheils. Gottingen, 1802-1805. 4 Bande. 

Paul Lacroix, Le moyen ctge et la Benaissance. 5 vols. 
Paris, 1847-1852. 

University of Paris 

Bulaeus, Historia Universitatis parisiensis. 6 vols. 1665- 
1673. 

Crevier, Histoire de V Universite de Paris, 1761. 7 vols. 

Jourdain, Histoire de V Universite de Paris au XVIP et au 
XVIIP siecles. Paris, 1862-1866. 

Histoire litteraire de la France, particularly volume XVI, 
and the Discours sur Vetat de lettres au XIIP, et au XI V^ siecle, 
in volume XXV de Daunon et de Victor Leclerc. 

1 The books already published on the history of the universities 
of the Middle Ages would make a large library. I confine myself 
here to an enumeration of the most important, and those of which 
I have made use. 

307 



308 ABELAKD 

Charles de Remusat, Abelard. 2 vols. Paris, 1845. 

Haureau, Histoire de la philosophie scholastique. 2 vols. 
Paris, 1880. 

Thurot, De V organisation de Venseignment dans V Universite 
de Paris au moijen ctge. 1 vol. Paris, 1850. 

Denifle, Chartularium Universitatis Farisiensis. Paris, 
Deldain. (Two volumes have been published, 1889-1891.) 

Budonsky, Die Universitdt Paris und die Fremden an dersel- 
ben im Mittelalter. 1 vol. Berlin, 1875. 



Provincial Universities of France 

Marcel Fournier, Les statuts et privileges des Universites 
fran^aises depuis leur fondation jusque 1789. (Tvv^o volumes 
have been published.) 

Bimbenet, Histoire de V Universite de Lois d^ Orleans. 1 vol. 
Paris, 1853. 

Germain, Etude historique sur Vecole de droit de Montpellier. 
Montpellier, 1877. 

Pierre Rangeard, Histoire de V Univer^site d'' Angers. 1 vol. 
Angers, 1868. 

Henri Beaune et d'Arbaurnun, Les Universites de Franche 
Comte. 1 vol. Dijon, 1870. 

Gadien-Arnoult, De V Universite de Toidoase « Vepoque de 
vapordation en 1229. Toulouse, 1866. 

Nadal, Histoire de V Universite de Valence. 1 vol. Valence, 
1861. 

Bandel, Histoire de V Universite de Cahors. 1 vol. Cahors, 
1876. 



Oerman Universities 

Comek, Geschichte der Prager Universitdten. Prag, 1849. 
Raumer, Die deutschen Universitdten. Stuttgart, 1854, 
Kaufmann, Die Geschichte der deutschen Universitdten. Vol. I. 
Stuttgart, 1888. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 309 

English Universities 

Mullinger, 21ie University of Cambridge. 2 vols. Cambridge, 
1873-1884. 
Huber, Die englischen universitdten. Cassel, 1839-1840. 
Newman, Historical Sketches (3d vol.). London, 1875. 



Italian Universities 

Ettore Coppi, Le Universitd Italiana nel medio evo. 1 vol. 
rirenze, 1880. 



Spanish Universities 

Vicente de la Euente, Historia de las Universidades en 
Espana. 4 vols. Madrid, 1884-1889. 
Zarate, De la instrubcion publica en Espana. Madrid, 1853. 



INDEX 



Abelard, the real founder of the 
University of Paris, 3; Victor 
Cousin on, 4; as a pupil, 6; opens 
schools of his own, 7; his pre-emi- 
nent abilities as a teacher, 9, 16 
before the Council of Soissons, 11 
at Sens, 12; his self-confidence, 12 
his career as a professor, 14 
founds the Paraclete, 15; by his 
method the precursor of the mod- 
ern spirit, 18; his Sic et Non, 20; 
his method reigned supreme in the 
University, 21; the eminence of 
his pupils 22; the precursor of 
the Renaissance, 23; influence of, 
upon the founding of universities, 
24. 

Albertus, Magnus, 204. 

Aquinas, Thomas, on the specializa- 
tion of the universities in the 
thirteenth century, 29, 204. 

Aristotle's Logic studied in the Fac- 
ulty of Arts, 176; Ethics of, 178; 
his Physics, 179; at Oxford and 
Cambridge, 181, 182. 

Arts, Faculty of, at Paris, 175; 
works read in, 176, 182; mixed 
character of, 191; had the lowest 
rank, 199. 

Avignon, University of, 29. 

B 

Barbarossa, Frederick, and the Uni- 
versity of Bologna, 42, 76, 82; the 
Hdbita of, 76. 



Baccalaureate, the, 151 et seq.; deri- 
vation of the work, 153 note. 

Bachelor, signification of the word, 
148, 154. 

Bachelorship, the test for, 150; sig- 
nificance of, 154. 

Bacon, Roger, studied at Paris, 56; 
a Humanist of the first rank, 59; 
on the progress of civil law, 219. 

Blois, Peter of, 67. 

Boethius, Divisions and Topics, 
178, 182, 

Bologna, University of, the first in 
date, 25, 27; at first a school of 
Roman law, 29 ; instituted by Fred- 
erick Barbarossa, 42, 49, 56, 63; 
its imitators, 65 ; the imperial con- 
stitution of, 76; the centre of 
canon and Roman law, 222, 225; 
the "Nations" at, how consti- 
tuted, 105; rector of, 123, 125. 

Books used in the universities, 182 
et seq.; method of studying, 183 
et seq.; scarcity of, 186. 

Bordeaux, University of, 43. 

Bourges, University of, 44. 



Caen, University of, 43. 

Cahors, University of, 42, 47. 

Cambridge, ^University of, 47, 56; 
its origin as described by Monta- 
lembert, 68 ; the chancellor of, 124. 

Canon law, the study of, 234; Fac- 
ulty of, 236, a caste by themselves, 
237. 

311 



312 



INDEX 



Cessatio, the right of, 87. 

Chancellor, the office of, 116 et seq. 

Church, the, relations of, to the in- 
tellectual movement, 36 et seq. 

Civil Law, Faculty of, 227; courses 
and methods of instruction in, 227 
et seq., 231; books used, 229. 

Class-room, University, appearance 
of, 170. 

Clericus, the word, 74. 

Coimbra, University of, 65. 

Colleges in Paris and elsewhere, 194 
et seq. 

"Colleges" used instead of "Fac- 
ulties," 111. 

Columbus supported by the Univer- 
sity of Salamanca, 59. 

Conceptualism, Abelard's doctrine, 
18. 

Constantine the African, 242, 244, 
250. 

Corporal punishment in the univer- 
sities, 279. 

Cornell, Ezra, 28. 

Courses, University, 172; Extraor- 
dinary, meaning of the term, 173. 

Criminal jurisdiction at various uni- 
versities, 78 et seq. 

Croisset, Professor M., quoted, 45. 

Crusades, influence of, upon West- 
ern Europe, 33. 



Dean, the University, 135. 
Decretals of Gratian, the influence 

of Abelard's method in, 22. 
Degrees in the University, system 

of, 142, 148; expense of obtaining, 

162 ; laxity in conferring, 284. 
Denifle, Pfere, on Abelard, 4; his 

classification of the universities, 

48. 
DHerminance, the, 149. 
Dissections in the medical schools 

of the Middle Ages, 255 et seq. 
Disputation, mania for, in the Middle 

Ages, 189. 
" Doctor," use of the term, 144. 



Doctorate, the, 160; great expense 
of obtaining the degree, 161. 

Dole, University of, 39; classes of 
students at, 270, 274. 

Donatus's Barbarism, 182. 

Douai, University at, 43. 

E 

Ergot, the term, 190 note. 

Examinations and diplomas, system 
of, originated in the universities, 
139. 

Examinations of the Middle Ages, 
complexity of, 161 ; abuses attend- 
ing, 163. 



Faculty, defined, use of the terra, 
107. 

Faculties, formation of, 108; the 
superior, 111 ; discord between, 
271; professors not always re- 
spected, 272. 

Ferrara, University of, 44. 

Florence, University of, 44. 

G 

Garde gardienne, the right of, 82. 

German universities, active part of, 
in public life, 295. 

Gerson, 293; protest of, against cor- 
poral punishment, 303. 

Grammar schools at Paris, 193. 

Gratian, the Decretals of, 235. 

Grenoble, the University of, 66. 

Grosseteste, Robert, studied at Paris, 
56; his influence, 58. 

H 

Habita, the, of Barbarossa, 76. 

Harenga, the, 153. 

Heidelberg, University of, 62, 69. 

Heloise, 9. 

Holidaj's, University, 177. 

Hopkins, Johns, 28. 

I 

Irnerius, 223; his method, 225. 



INDEX 



313 



Lanfranc, 5. 

Law, teaching of, in the university, 
214; canon and civil, 215 ; Roman, 
216; prohibition of the teaching of 
civil, 217; professors of, 218; civil, 
favored by Clement V, 220 ; teach- 
ing of civil, influence of, 221; Ro- 
man, never completely abandoned, 
223. 

Lendit fair, 122 and note. 

Lerida, University of, 64. 

Licentiate's degree, examination 
and conditions for, 155. 

Lisbon, University of, 65. 

Locke at Montpellier, 247. 

Logic, study of, 176, 180, 182, 200. 

Lombard, Peter, 55 ; universities fre- 
quented by him, and his teachings, 
66; his Book of the Sentences, 
152, 208. 

M 

Master, title of, equivalent to that of 
doctor, 157. 

Medical studies during the Middle 
Ages, 240 et seq. ; in the universi- 
ties, 242, 249 et seq. ; influence of 
Arabian medicine, 242. 

Medical sciences, the chief study in 
the Spanish universities, 30. 

Medicine, practice of, in the Middle 
Ages, 253 et seq. 

Medicine, Faculty of, 242, 244 et seq., 
248, 252, 257. 

Melun, Robert of, 67. 

Merton, "Walter de, college founda- 
tion of, 196. 

Methods of study in the universities, 
184 et seq. 

Military service, universities exempt 
from, 85, 

Montpellier, University of, 63, 66, 80 ; 
number of students at, 100; "Na- 
tions " in, 105, 224; devotion of the 
doctors in the plague at, 259 ; Fac- 
ulty of Medicine in, 246; Jews at, 
247, 248; students' riot at, 275; 
ascetic rules at, 278. 



N 
Nantes, University of, 44. 
" Nations " in the universities, 98 

et seq., 101, 104, 105, 224; had each 

its special patron, 106. 
Navarre, College of, at Paris, 206. 
Nuntii of the universities, 133. 



Odo, 5. 

Orleans, University of, 29, 48; exer- 
cises the right of cessatio, 87; its 
special privileges, 91; number of 
students at, 100; university of 
law only, 215. 

Oxford, the study of theology car- 
ried to, from Paris, 30 ; prepara- 
tions for the LTniversity of, 57, 62; 
the rector of, 124; and Cambridge, 
197; political powers of, 295. 



Padua, University of, 65 ; civil immu- 
nity of, 79; " Nations " in, 105. 

Palencia, University of, 27. 

Pandects of Justinian, 223. 

Paris, University of. Abelard its 
real founder, 3, 4; its precise ori- 
gin unknown, 26; the prototype 
of many others, 27, 61, 63; begin- 
ning of, 28, 29; dialectics and 
theology emphasized at, 30; the 
rapid growth of, 55; men of mark 
at, 55 ; Oxonians at, 56 ; the leader- 
ship of, 69 ; defends its privileges, 
75 ; privileges granted to, by the 
Pope Celestine III, 77, and by 
Philip Augustus, 78 ; has the right 
of cessatio conferred upon it, 88; 
exercises the right, 89; the form 
assumed in, by the " Nations," 101 
et seq. ; the Faculties at, 103 ; re- 
lations of the Faculties and the 
"Nations," 104; distinction be- 
tween the Faculty of Arts and the 
other Faculties, 104, 110; rector 
of, 115, 120 ; prerogatives of, 121 ; 



314 



INDEX 



election of, 123; the three degrees 
in, 148; a picture of the life of a 
student in, 167 et seg.; Faculty of 
Arts in, 175; the theological uni- 
versity, 201, 203, 214, 264; morals 
of the students of, 276; authority 
of, 288; the docile child of royalty, 
292; takes part in religious quar- 
rels, 293 ; asserted its rights against 
the popes, 297. 

Pavia, University of, 44. 

Peabody, George, 28. 

Pedagogies, the, 191. 

Petrarch, 213; studied lav? at Mont- 
pellier, 233 ; his Invectives against 
a Physician, 258; his memories 
of Montpellier, 264. 

Placentin, 226. 

Plater, Felix, 99. 

Poitiers, University of, 39, 43, 84; 
number of students at, 100; "Na- 
tions" in, 105. 

Porree, Gilbert de la, 55; the Six 
Principles of, 182. 

Prague, University of, the first Ger- 
man university, 55, 61 ; ** Nations " 
in, 105. 

Priscian's Grammar, 182. 

Privileges in the Middle Ages, 73; 
of the universities, 73 et seq.; ex- 
tended to certain classes of trades- 
men, 93. 

Procurator, the, 103, 130. 

Professors, university, method of 
lecturing and customs of, 171; and 
students in the universities, 267, 
281 ; habits of, 279 ; youth of, 281 ; 
pay of, 282; poverty of, 284; celi- 
bacy of, 285. 

Propositum, the, 153. 

Pulleyne, Robert, 63. 



Quintilian, 140. 



Rabelais at Montpellier, 247,252,273. 
Rector, of the University of Paris, 



115; prerogatives of, 121 et seq.; 
age and pay, 123 et seq.; tempo- 
rary character of his functions, 
125; honors of, 126; pay of, 128; 
installation of, 126. 

Religious orders, the heirs of the 
monastic schools, 8. 

Renaissance, age of, universities 
founded in, 58. 

S 

Saint Anselm, 5. 

Salamanca, University of, 47; birth 
and rank of, 59 et seq. ; supported 
Columbus, 59; life at, during the 
Middle Ages, 97 et seq. 

Salerno, medical school in, 242 et 
seq., 245. 

Salisbury, John of, a pupil of Abe- 
lard, 16, 67 ; enthusiasm of, for the 
University of Paris, 264. 

Saragossa, University of, 64. 

Schools in the Dark Ages, 5. 

Sentences, the, by Peter Lombard, 
influence of Abelard's method in, 
22. 

Sienna, University of, 65. 

Sorbon, Robert de, on the examina- 
tions for the licentiate's degree, 
156; his six rules, 300. 

•' Sorbonne," the origin of, 205. 

Students, university, numbers of, 
99, 167; poverty of, 266; relation 
between professors and, 267; rela- 
tions between each other, 268; 
equality between, 270; faults of, 
272 et seq. ; profligacy of, 276; 
bad breeding of, 277. 

Studium, the term, 28. 

Studium generate, the term, 32. 

Sully, Maurice de, 55. 

Surgical science in the Middle Ages, 
248 et seq., 257. 

Syndic, the university, 131. 



Taxes, in the Middle Ages, 84; uni- 
versities exempt from, 84. 



INDEX 



Si 5 



Theology not taught In all univer- 
Bities, 29; rank of the study of, 
200 et seq.; Faculty of, importance 
of, 202; books used by, 207; 
Scholastic, its principal character- 
istics, 209; problems of, 211; 
always associated with philosophic 
studies, 212. 

Toulouse, University of, 63, 80; 
number of students at, 100; stud- 
ies in, 181. 

Turin, University of, its special priv- 
ileges, 91. 

U 

Universities, the first, their origin 
gradual, 25; began by specializa- 
tion, not as complete bodies of 
instruction, 29; at first like the 
trade-guilds, 33, 34, 140; fostered 
by the popes, 36, 38; and by the 
civil authorities, 41; principle of 
classification of, 48 ; multiplication 
of, 49; list of, in the order of their 
founding, 50 etseq.; chief, belong- 
ing to the age of the Renaissance, 
53; modern, 54; of Germany, 54; 
privileges and immunities of, 73 et 
seq.; little republics, 74, 114, 137; 
criminal jurisdiction in, 78 et seq.: 
exempt from all taxes, 84; and 
from military service, 85; special 
privileges enjoyed by some, 91 et 



seq.; ecclesiastical immunities of, 
92; abuses of their privileges, 93; 
solicitude of princes and popes for 
their welfare, 94 ; sources of their 
prosperity, 95; distinguishing 
characteristics of, 96 et seq.; num- 
ber of students attending, 99 ; the 
"Nations" in the, 98, 101; self- 
governing, 115; the office of chan- 
cellor in, 119 et seq.; office of 
rector in, 120 et seq.; other officers 
of, 129 et seq.; assemblies of, 134; 
government of, 136; the first 
bodies to exercise self-government, 
137; examinations and diplomas 
in, 139; system of degrees in, 142; 
the daily life and customs of a, 
167 et seq.; influence of, on society, 
287 et seq.: internal life of, 263 et 
seq.; large share of, in general edu- 
cation, 265; poverty of the stu- 
dents, 266; relation between the 
professors and the students, 267; 
use of the rod in, 279 ; take part in 
public affairs, 289 et seq.; centres 
of intellectual development, 296; 
liberty of spirit in, 298 et seq.; the 
immense services of, 304. 
" University," original significance 
of the term, 31. 



Vacarius, 62. 



TiTorluooli ^regg : 

J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith, 

Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 



' ' Just in the right time to meet the needs of a large number of teach- 
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on the theory of education." — Hon. W. T. Harris, U.S. Commissioner 
of Education. 



THE GREAT EDUCATORS. 

Edited by NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER, Ph.D. Sold separately. 
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A series of volumes giving concise, comprehensive accounts 
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cation ; and it is expected that the series, when completed, 
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Herbart, and Horace Mann, will be adequately described and 
criticised. 

ARISTOTLE, and the Ancient Educational Ideals. By Thomas 

Davidson, M.A., LL.D. Ready. 
ALCUIN, and the Rise of the Christian Schools. By Andrew F. 

West, Ph.D., Professor of Latin and Pedagogics in Princeton 

University. Ready. 
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Jules Gabriel Compayre, Rector of the Academy of Poitiers, 

France. Ready. Net, ^1.25. 
LOYOLA, and the Educational System of the Jesuits. By Rev. 

Thomas Hughes, S.J., of Detroit College. Ready. 
FROEBEL. By H. COURTHOPE Bowen, M.A., Lecturer on Educa- 
tion in the University of Cambridge. Ready. 
HORACE MANN; or, Public Education in the United States. By 

the Editor. In Preparation. 
BELL AND LANCASTER ; or, The English Education of To-day. 

By J. G. Fitch, LL.D., Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools. In 

Preparation. 

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" Pestalozzi ; or, the Friend and Student of Children'.' and on " Herbart ; 
or. Modern German Education" are in preparation. 

I 



THE GREAT EDUCATORS. 



NOTICES OF THE SERIES. 

"Admirably conceived in a truly philosophic spirit and executed 
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" I am very glad to see this excellent contribution to the history of 
education. It comes just in the right time to meet the needs of a large 
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fundamental and satisfying on the theory of education. Professor 
Davidson's work is admirable. His topic is one of the most profitable 
in the entire history of culture." — W. T. Harris, U S. Commissioner 
of Education. 

" I have examined with much interest Professor West's work — 
' Alcuin and the Rise of the Christian School.' It is founded on care- 
ful researches, is well planned, and is characterized by a high degree of 
literary merit. I cannot doubt that the series of ' Great Educators,' 
under the general editorial supervision of Professor Butler, will be of 
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" The Great Educators. This is the title of a new series of educa- 
tional works, edited by Professor Nicholas Murray Butler, and intended 
to discuss the great systems which have prevailed from the earliest 
times down to the present day. . . . The plan is to make these 
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of education, and the one represented at the present moment by the 
two volumes before us promises, to take an important place — a leading 
place — amongst the few we have." — London Educational Times. 



THE GREAT EDUCATORS. 



ARISTOTLE, and the Ancient Educational Ideals. By 

Thomas Davidson, M.A., LL.D. 

The whole of ancient pedagogy is Professor Davidson's 
subject, the course of education being traced up to Aristotle, 
— an account of whose life and system forms, of course, the 
main portion of the book, — and down from that great teacher, 
as well as philosopher, through the decline of ancient civiliza- 
tion. An appendix discusses " The Seven Liberal Arts," and 
paves the way for the next work in chronological sequence, — 
Professor West's, on Alcuin. The close relations between 
Greek education and Greek social and political life are kept 
constantly in view by Professor Davidson. The book is divided 
into four portions, — "Introductory," "The Hellenic Period," 
"Aristotle," "The Hellenistic Period." A special and very 
attractive feature of the work is the citation, chiefly in English 
translation, of passages from original sources expressing the 
spirit of the different theories described. 

" Delightful reading. I know nothing in English that covers the field 
of Greek Education so well. You will find it very hard to maintain this 
level in the later works of the Series, but I can wish you nothing better 
than that you may do so." — G. Stanley Hall, Clark University. 

" I have had great pleasure in examining the advance sheets of 
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California. 

" Please forward at once twenty copies of ' Aristotle, or the Ancient 
Educational Ideals,' by Thomas Davidson. It is a great book, and I 
must give my Senior Class a taste of it before they graduate." — J. C. 
Greenough. Slale Normal School, Westfield, Mass. 



LOYOLA, and the Educational System of the Jesuits. By 

Rev. Thomas Hughes, S.J. 

This work is a critical and authoritative statement of the- 
educational principles and method adopted in the Society 
of Jesus, of which the author is a distinguished member. 
The first part is a sketch, biographical and historical, of the 



THE GREAT EDUCATORS. 



dominant and directing personality of Ignatius, tlie Founder 
of the order, and his comrades, and of the establishment and 
early administrations of the Society. In the second, an elab- 
orate analysis of the system of studies is given, beginning 
with an account of Aquaviva and the Ratio Studionim, and 
considering, under the general heading of " the formation of 
the master,'' courses of literature and philosophy, of divinity 
and allied sciences, repetition, disputation, and dictation ; and 
under that of "formation of the scholar," symmetry of the 
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courses. 

" This work places before the English-speaking public, for the first 
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founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola. Its value, therefore, irrespective of 
its intrinsic merits, is unique. . . . The author has exhibited a rare 
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noisseur." — Conde' B. VK\A.Y.^,m Educational Review. 

" This volume on St. Ignatius of Loyola and the Educational System 
of the Jesuits,' by the Rev. Thomas Hughes, will probably be welcomed 
by others besides those specially interested in the theories and methods 
of education. Written by a member of the Jesuit Society, it comes to 
us with authority, and presents a complete and well-arranged survey of 
the work of educational development carried out by Ignatius and his 
followers." — London Saturday Review. 



ALCUIN, and the Rise of the Christian Schools. By 

Andrew F. West, Ph.D., Professor of Latin and Peda- 
gogics in Princeton University. 

Professor West aims to develop the story of educational 
institutions in Europe from the beginning of the influence 
of Christianity on education to the origin of the Universi- 
ties and the first beginnings of the modern movement. A 
careful analysis is made of the effects of Greek and Roman 
thought on the educational theory and practice of the early 
Christian, and their great system of schools, and its results 
are studied with care and in detail. The personality of 
Alcuin enters largely into the story, because of his domi- 
nating influence in the movement. 

" I take pleasure in saying that it seems to me to combine careful 
scholarly investigation with popularity, and condensation with interest 
of detail, in a truly admirable way." — Professor G. T. Ladd, of Yale. 



THE GREAT EDUCATORS, 



" I have read it with much profit and interest. Professor West has 
given a vivid and trustworthy picture of the man and his work. The 
estimate of Alcuin's services to the cause of Education in Europe is, it 
seems to me, a very just one, and the book is a contribution to the his- 
tory of the progress of education." — Professor MARTIN L. D'OOGE, 
University of Michigan. 

" Hochgeehrte Herren : — 

Die von Ihnen mir freundlichst zugeschickte Schrift des Herrn 
Prof. West iiber Alcuin habe ich mit lebhaftem Interesse gelesen und 
bin iiberrascht davon in N. America eine so eingehende Beschaftigung 
mit unserer Vorzeit und eine so ausgebreitete Kenntniss der Literatur 
iiber diesen Gegenstand zu finden. Es sind mir wohl Einzelheiten 
begegnet, an denen ich etwas auszusetzen fand, die ganze Auffassung 
und Darstellung aber kann ich nur als sehr wohl gelungen und zutref- 
fend bezeiclmen. ^^^ ausgezeichneter Hochachtung, 

" Berlin, December 1892. Prof. Wattenbach." 

" Prof. West's 'Alcuin' — A very interesting and scholarly treatment 
of an attractive and important theme." — EDWARD H. GRIFFIN, John 
Hopkins University. 



FROEBEL. By H. Courthope Bo wen, M.A., Lecturer on 
Education in the University of Cambridge. 

Friedrich Froebel stands for the movement known both in 
Europe and in this country as the New Education, more com- 
pletely than any other single name. His careful analysis of 
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him the practical insight into the early educational process 
that makes his ideas so fruitful and important. The kin- 
dergarten movement, and the whole development of modern 
methods of teaching, have been largely stimulated by, if not 
entirely based upon, his philosophical exposition of education. 
Mr. Bowen passes each of these points in review, and gives 
an analysis of the principle of self-activity in education that 
is extremely suggestive. It is not believed that any other 
account of Froebel and his work is so complete and exhaus- 
tive, as the author has for many years been a student of 
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quent examiner of kindergartens, of the children in them, 
and of students who are trained to be kindergarten teachers. 

The table of contents contains, among other important 
headings^ the following : Froebel's Early Days ; Education at 



THE GREAT EDUCATORS. 



School and University ; Principles as Teacher and Reformer ; 
Leading Principles ; The " Education of Man " ; Mutter und 
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Educational Value ; Froebel's Theory of Education ; Views 
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' ' No one, in England or America, is fitted to give a more sympathetic 
or lucid interpretation of Froebel than Mr. Courthope Bowen. ... Mr. 
Bowen's book will be a most important addition to any library, and no 
student of Froebel can afford to do without it. " — Kate Douglas Wiggin, 
New York City. 

ABELARD, and the Origin and Early History of Univer- 
sities. By Jules Gabriel Compayre, Rector of the 
Academy of Poitiers, France. Net, $1.25. 

M. Compayre, the well-known French educationist, has 
prepared in this volume an account of the origin of the 
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Naturally the University of Paris is the central figure in 
the account ; and the details of its early organization and 
influence are fully given. Its connection with the other 
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that is most instructive. 

Many important additions have been made to our valuable 
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